


The Missing Plane

by gauthannja



Series: The Art of Management [4]
Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: Alternative Family Structures, Eyeshield 21 15th Anniversary!, F/M, Love Triangles, Mystery, Romance, detective Suzuna, hiruma and mamori have kids, home is where the heart is, more fics with Panther please, rehabilitating Agon is fun!, what the heck is marriage?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-02-18 20:54:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauthannja/pseuds/gauthannja
Summary: When SoraAir Flight 237 goes missing with Hiruma Youichi on it, everyone assumes it is a hoax to gain media attention for his fundraiser tournament. But when the tournament ends and Hiruma still hasn't reappeared, Suzuna takes up the detective Case of the Missing Plane. Her investigation leads her straight to Kongo Agon.  Meanwhile, after volunteering for the fundraiser, Super Bowl champion Patrick "Panther" Spencer decides to stay in Japan a little longer, and ends up filling in for Hiruma in more ways than one...





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place 15 years after the World Youth Cup (I estimated circa 2016*). It makes reference to World Cup characters and countries, however, if you haven't read that section of the manga it should be fine!!! 
> 
> This is also the continuation of the previous stories in this series ([The Art of Management](http://archiveofourown.org/series/552349) \-- all Hirumamo tales), but this story takes place meant years later so if you haven't read them it should also be fine. The main thing to know is Panther and Hiruma were both on the San Antonio Armadillos (as pictured in the anime!) and they had a pretty intense experience. The rest should become clear just from the text.
> 
> Rating: General or Teen level (grown up themes nothing explicit) for the most part until the last chapter. 
> 
> * I only found out ES21's 15th anniversary was 2017 after most of this had been written!

Prompted by the sounds from the end of the bed and the way the covers were piled up beside her, Mamori peered at the clock. 4:30am. She buried her head under the blankets for a moment before forcing herself to face whatever it was that had caused her to be awake in that moment. Hiruma was nearly finished dressing. Something was strange.

“What on earth are you wearing?” she murmured drowsily.

Hiruma threw her a knowing grin. “It's my salaryman outfit. For camouflage.”

“Camouflage where?”

“I'm flying commercial today.”

“Oh,” she rubbed her eyes but it did not help her feel more awake. “I'm so sorry.”

“Keh, don't worry. It's first class. It could be worse.”

She watched him skeptically through half-closed eyes and cringed as he adjusted a cheap and tasteless tie. “Did you pack a nicer suit at least?”

“Kehkeheh. Flying across the world to meet a client dressed like the fucking shrimp would be a good way to burn through a lot of money with zero return on investment.”

“I am still not sure how Sena became the poster child of a salaryman to you...”

“By quitting the NFL to become a salaryman, that’s how.”

“Which in no way explains why you are wearing that. Are you feeling sick?”

“Kehkeheh, don't worry about me, I can dress myself, Mama-mori.” He slipped on the jacket she despised. She would have thrown it out long before but he kept it safely hidden somewhere, probably with a whole collection of disguises that would better serve as kindling to a bonfire.

“When is your flight?” she pushed back the blanket and willed herself to sit up, “I'll put something together for your lunch before you go.”

“I’ve gotta split. Go back to sleep.”

“If you had told me it was so early I would have gotten something ready sooner.”

“Keh, I know,” He threw the covers over her and pushed her back against the pillow with a kiss. “I didn't tell you so that you would sleep.”

The kiss was longer than one a person in a rush might give. It was enough to close her eyes and tempt her toward a dream, but it failed to shut off her mothering impulse completely. “Ugh, airplane food... Which airline is it?”

“Don't worry, I won't touch the food,” he assured her as he picked up his carry-on bag and fedora. He still bleached his hair, even though Mamori warned him it would fall out, but he kept it just short enough that he could tuck it away under a hat when needed. Apparently this was one of those times.“Unfortunately the coffee is shit no matter which company... but, yeah I put the itinerary on the fridge if you’re curious. And the monster's uniform is in the spot we talked about, as promised. She'll never suspect.”

“So reliable, as always.”

His hand was on the door, but he paused with a distant look in his eyes. “Ah.”

“What?”

“I never told you, did I...”

“Tell me what?”

“About the time I broke a promise.”

“Hm? What promise?”

“It was a long time ago... When I played for San Antonio...”

Mamori caught something in his voice and pushed herself up on her elbows. “Youichi...?”

“Well,” he concluded without explanation, “you know how I feel about promises.”

“Why are you thinking about that now? It’s been forever since you played for the Armadillos.”

“It's nothing.”

“What's wrong?”

“It's nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Alright,” she lay back again with an exhausted sigh. “Have a safe trip.”

Sleep crept up quickly but she could not shake the feeling he had not left. It was impossible to know how many minutes had passed when she opened her eyes again. He was still there. The door was open but he had not stepped through.

“Hmm... You're back already?

Hiruma just looked at her. Maybe it was a dream. She smiled through her drowsiness and managed to scold him. “Don't be late...”

“I love you.”

Mamori sat up suddenly, wide awake with a chill down her spine. “Youichi? What’s wrong? What is it? Where are you going?” The door had already closed behind him. She threw back the covers and rushed after him, flinging open the door and running the length of the hall, down the stairs, past the kitchen and through the entry until she stood on the front step alone in the dark. But he was already gone.

 


	2. World Youth All Star Reunion Spring Camp

The camera crew was set up in the corner of the field, angled so that the opening ceremony could be seen unfolding behind the woman at the center of their shot. She smiled patiently as she held her broadcast microphone ready and listened into her earpiece. In the tiny monitor beside the camera she could barely make out the news anchors, but she was certain they were smiling too.  

“We are coming to you live from the opening event of the World Youth All Star Reunion Spring Camp! Our reporter Kumabukuro Riko is at Southwest Tokyo stadium– Kumabukuro-san, you got your start covering American Football in high school. How does it feel to take a break from reporting on geopolitics to go back to your roots?”

“I wouldn’t miss this event for the world, Nakamura-san,” Riko tried to keep her tone measured. No matter how excited she might be, she was also a professional. “It’s been fifteen years since these players from around the globe faced one another in New York City for the first ever World Youth Cup. They each went on to have outstanding careers in their respective countries, yet they have been generous enough to come back together for this fundraiser event. Not only will they be raising money for a great cause, they will be treating the underprivileged kids participating in this camp to an unforgettable experience, training with such renowned players!”

“You mentioned the players participating in the reunion are from different countries—do you think it was covering the World Youth Cup that got you interested in pursuing journalism on international politics?”

“Haha, it’s hard to say,” Riko smiled awkwardly back into the camera, a little put off by the unnecessary references to her career. “Even though some of these players come from countries that are currently in hostile relations, on the field those differences are put aside and instead respect each other as rivals. And that’s what I love about American Football! It is really exciting to see them reunited here for this worthy cause.”

“That’s so true, isn’t it?” The anchor seemed thrilled with her politically correct response, “Kumabukuro-san, can you tell us a bit more about the Spring Camp?”

“Of course. The top players from the finalist countries have come out of retirement to train teams of disadvantaged youth. The grande finale will be a tournament at the end of the two weeks in which the teams will face off to win the All Star Cup! As you know, all proceeds from the ticket sales will be going to the orphanage that many of the children participating in the Spring Camp currently call home.”

“I am sure the children are excited for this spectacular opportunity,” The anchor nodded in approval. “Maybe it’s time to introduce the players?”

They cut to the zoom lens feed for close-ups of the former World Youth Cup players across the field, who were being assigned players of their spring camp teams.  

“Representing Japan, of course, it’s the one and only Sena Kobayakawa, the man with the lightning legs who made his debut as ‘Eyeshield 21’.”

“Who can forget the American football craze that struck Japan following Kobayakawa-san’s rise to fame? It has been said that every single TV in the country was tuned to his first Super Bowl game that year!”

“He certainly became a role model for many young people here and inspired many to become amefuto players,” Riko agreed. “Beside him, with the gleaming teeth, is Toni Hakkinen as the representative from Finland. Next, from Germany, with a mind of steel, it’s the legendary Heinrich Schultz. Beside him is General Gomery, who was of course only a sergeant when he played for Militaria in the World Youth Cup all those years ago.  The Russian representative is the former Olympic weightlifting champion-turned-lineman Ivan Rodchenko. Finally, from America we have the World Youth Cup MVP, the zero-gravity runner and three-time Super Bowl champion—yes, he’s really here, in Japan!!! Mr. Patrick ‘Panther’ Spencer!”

“That is really quite the international cast and a star-studded lineup!” the anchor gushed, “But Kumabukuro-san, the biggest story is of course who is _not_ at the spring camp.”

“That’s right, Nakamura-san. Everyone is talking about Hiruma Youichi, the diabolical mastermind and organizer of this reunion –the man who, despite his unorthodox methods, very nearly became Japan’s national hero when he entered the NFL a year before Kobayakawa-san. Hiruma-san went missing three weeks ago when SoraAir Flight 237 disappeared. The search so far has turned up no trace of the missing plane.”

“The plane disappeared somewhere between Militaria and Russia… Kumabukuro-san, as a geopolitical commentator what is your perspective on this?”

Riko grit her teeth but outwardly held the default expression she always used to report on grave situations. “Respecting the spirit of the World Youth Cup, I would rather focus on camaraderie and sportsmanship of this All Star Spring Camp than comment on the tensions between Militaria and Russia at this moment.” Before the anchor could reply, Riko transitioned quickly to a more important topic. “The disappearance of Flight 237 has gained international media attention, but Hiruma-san is not the only missing person involved in the spring camp. As you know, all the proceeds from the camp will go to the local orphanage. Three children have gone missing from this orphanage in the last few months. I have the headmistress of the orphanage here. Madame Mariko, do you have a message for our listeners?” Riko held her microphone toward the headmistress.

“Yes, please…” the grey-haired woman clutched the microphone and stared into the camera as though she thought she might find the missing orphans inside.  “If you are watching… Hinako-chan… Touji-kun… Kaito-kun… Please come home. I know it is not fair, that your home has no parents. But we have each other.  Everyone misses you. We are worried about you. We need to know you are safe. Please, if you can hear me… Let us know you are safe.”

“How old were the children who disappeared?” Riko asked.

“They _are_ six years old,” the headmistress emphasized the present tense, “Well, Kaito just turned seven. They would be starting second grade this year. Please, if anyone has seen them, if anyone has any information, please let us know.”

Riko thanked the headmistress and an assistant ushered her away. On the monitor, photos of the children were being shown as the anchor gave the number to contact if viewers had any information. Next was a commercial break, then it would be the weather. Meanwhile, in the stadium, the ceremony was ending. Riko still needed to do some interviews that would be aired throughout the day, so she waited as the children were dismissed. Sports really did have an incredible effect on people, she reflected, not for the first time. To someone who did not know their situation, the children who flocked to headmistress Mariko might seem happy. Maybe they _were_ happy, momentarily distracted from wondering what had become of their friends.  But did sports really solve anything?

 

~*~

 

“I’m not gonna lie, Japanese kids are pretty cute,” Panther confessed as he settled into the folding chair beside Sena at the autograph table, “All that bowing and stuff, like teeny-tiny little adults. Man, they slay me!”

“You know that’s just normal here, right?” Sena smiled. It had been too long since he had last spent time with Panther.

“Yeah, but still! Normal in America –I mean, Sena, you know what kids are normally like in America.” Panther shook his head but it was all in good fun. Off to the side he saw a pair of kids waiting eagerly to approach the table, jumping from one foot to the other as a woman with a clipboard tried to create order among the spectators who had come for signatures and to draw their attention to the raffle table.  When the instructions had finished, the pair burst forward, yelling and jumping over one another to reach the table first. The woman shouted after them to wait in line and behave themselves but their attention was for the football players alone.

“A bit more like that, for example.” Panther laughed as the children shoved pens at Rodchenko and the others. “Are those really Japanese kids? Why didn’t they run straight for you, Sena? I thought you were the hero of Japanese football…”

The taller of the two was a skinny girl dressed like a punk on pixie dust with a football jersey thrown over top. Her spiky black hair was pulled up in inky puffs on either side of her head, each trimmed with half a dozen hair clips. The other kid must have been her younger brother. The jersey he wore fit him more like a dress as he grasped the edge of the table to maintain his position in the rather one-sided battle for the footballers’ attention.

“Are you friends with my dad?” the girl asked, chomping on gum.

Rodchenko raised an eyebrow at her as he scribbled on the board she had passed him. “Who’s your dad?”

“Look at her,” Heinrich stated in his flat, factual tone, “Obviously she is Hiruma’s.”

“Oh… damn.” Hakkinen murmured. “Poor kid.”

Panther looked at the girl again. Of course the pointed ears should have been a dead give away but he glanced at Sena for confirmation. Sena nodded. “That’s Yume. And Zak is her brother.”

“I can introduce myself, thankyouverymuch Uncle Sena!” the girl shot a steely glare across the table along with a self-assured smirk. Panther felt a shiver run through him. It was like seeing a ghost, meeting those eyes again.

“I wasn’t friends with your dad, we were rivals!” Rodchenko replied. “He was a terrifying rival!”

Yume grinned up at him, “I'd say! He wiped the floor with you!”1

“Why— you little brat!”

“I’ve watched the tape a hundred times!”

“Then you’d know we had him on the ropes!”

“Nah-ah!”

Panther tried to focus on his own autographs, but he could not contain his laughter as the ridiculously muscular Olympic athlete argued with the spindly little girl.  In the meantime her brother had collected signatures from all the other players and was already standing in front of him.

“Hello, I’m Zakari,” he said quietly as he held his board out. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Panther Spencer.”

“Nice to meet you, Zak.”

“Mr. Panther… which dinosaur is your favourite?” the boy asked in a whisper.

“It’s pretty hard to choose a favourite…” Panther grinned. “Triceratops is good. Which is your favourite?”

“Parasauralaphous,” he replied, “but Struthiomimus is the fastest.”

“Oh! Okay I better remember that!” Panther laughed. “Your English is very good. Did your dad teach you?”

Zakari shrugged timidly, but he didn’t take his eyes off Panther.

“I was on your dad’s team, you know. We were good friends.”

“I know!” In a flash the boy seemed to forget his shyness, “I watched all your games!”

“You watched—Wait, how old are you?” Panther frowned.

“I’m seven.”

Sena leaned in. “I think Zak-kun means he watched the recordings of your games. He wasn’t born yet when Hiruma was in America.”

Panther nodded, but something still bothered him. “Hiruma never mentioned anything about having kids.”

“Well, Hiruma doesn’t mention a lot of things,” Sena laughed awkwardly.

After teasing every other member of the World Youth Cup reunion, Yume had finally made her way to their end of the table. There was no subtly in the journey, every movement was a performance, and so her arms stretched wide as she held out the board to him. “Here! Sign! To Yume: y – u – m - e.”

Panther took it from her ceremoniously and signed with great flourish. He couldn’t take his eyes from her face as he returned it. “Hey, Yume, how old are you?”

Her grin stretched wider as if daring him to count her tiny fangs. He only saw four, perhaps a normal number if canines were considered fangs, but for a human hers were remarkably pointed. “Eleven years and three months and six days.”

“What, no hours?” Panther matched her grin. This was definitely Hiruma’s kid, even if he must have been playing for San Antonio when she was born. But Sena had a point: there were a lot of things Hiruma didn’t mention.  

“I dunno!” she shrugged, “I don’t know what time it is.” She did a little spin as she waited for Sena’s signature, then addressed the entire table. “I bet my dad's super mad he had to miss seeing you guys again. But don’t worry! If he doesn't get back before you leave I'll tell him hi from you all.”

The former football players exchanged glances, some uncertain how to interpret her announcement, others filled with pity. But Yume seemed to have forgotten them already, snatching up the completed autograph board and dancing off with her brother straggling behind. She stopped in front of the woman with the clipboard and held up her treasure impatiently before dropping it in her arms. “Hey hey! Mama-mori! Hold this!!”

“Yume!!!” the woman called after the girl as she bolted away, “Come back here this instant and ask properly!”

General Gomery turned to Sena. “Is that the widow?”

“Euhh... I… well…” Sena stuttered, obviously nervous to be addressed directly by the military man. “I don't know about widow... I guess, kind of.”

“The All Star Camp manager?” Panther looked back at the woman as Gomery crossed the field to her. “Wasn't she your manager on the Devil Bats, way back in the day?”

“Yeah, Mamori-neesa—err, yeah. Mamori. She was the manager of Hiruma’s college team, too. You never really met her, did you?”

“Not really. I mean, she’s been directing everything for the camp, so yeah, we met, but I didn’t know…” Panther replied, but his mind had wandered back to the math. “Hiruma never mentioned her either.”

Sena’s helpless smile flickered. “Yeah… Hiruma doesn't mention things.”

 

~*~

 

General Gomery bowed slightly to Mamori with a fist to his chest as a form of salute. “I wanted to present my condolences.”

“You are kind to say so, General, thank you.”

“There are rumors that my country was involved somehow with the disappearance of that plane. I can't put stock in rumors but if there is any truth to them I must apologize on behalf of my country as well.”

Mamori nodded, but suddenly looked past him. “Just one moment, General— Yume! what did I say about swearing?!” she shouted at her daughter from across the field. Then she seamlessly returned to their grown-up conversation. “Pardon me. Do you believe Militaria was involved?”

“In my country there are many who approve of displaying our might. If the plane had been shot down I would have no surprise someone from Militaria was involved, but the signal was lost without any indication they were fired at. A disappearance... is not unthinkable but I can't imagine what they would gain from something like this. This might be the pride that I hold for my country speaking, but I would sooner believe we were being framed.”

“I see,” she said thoughtfully. Clearly she was searching for answers, too, but had not considered that possibility before.

“Militaria has enemies who could benefit from us being saddled with the blame. But there is another rumor...”

Mamori sighed. “You mean the rumor that the entire thing was a publicity stunt engineered by Hiruma to promote the All Star Camp?”

“Yes, that one.”

“I wish that were true. I would sleep much more easily.”

“If it is true, he chose the wrong country to stage his little PR gag. Militaria will not tolerate being framed. There will be retaliation,” he warned. “Are you going to claim he couldn’t pull off a stunt like that?”

“Of course he could pull it off,” she replied with a touch of defiance. “But he wouldn’t do it like this.”

It might have been an amusing response, if the subject had been anyone other than Hiruma Youichi. “What makes you so sure it’s not a stunt?”

“The timing. The plane disappeared three weeks ago. News goes stale after a few days, and Hiruma would never waste so much time, disappearing for so long unnecessarily.” But the certainty in her voice was forced; she was trying to convince herself. “He is a very, very busy person. He definitely would have done it much closer to the opening ceremony.”

“Yet three weeks later, this news hardly seems stale,” Gomery noted. “There could be many explanations for the timing.”

“There could be,” she admitted. “We will know for certain at the final game of the All Star Camp tournament.”

“Of course,” he followed her logic, “That is the day you need publicity the most. With all the hype, your fundraiser would be a huge success. Selling out tickets to the final game would be icing on the cake.”

Mamori nodded slowly. “But if he appears on that day, I am afraid Militaria will have no chance for revenge.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because, General,” she met his eyes again with a harsh earnestness, “If Hiruma staged his own disappearance, I will kill him.”

Her voice held a glacial edge but beneath it he sensed a latent fury that seemed difficult to fake. He considered her response for a moment but the silence was interrupted as Yume and Zakari ran past them, shouting and laughing, seemingly carefree, eventually collapsing in a tackle at the next twenty-yard line. They did not even have a ball.

“Your daughter seems to believe Hiruma will return,” the General recalled.

“Well, like many of us, she has been led to believe that the word 'impossible' does not apply to that man,” Mamori sounded like a teacher stating facts that had been covered on the first day of class, tiresome to repeat but no less true. “And she has had no reason to doubt him so far.”

“You don’t believe it is a stunt…” Gomery frowned, “but you believe he is alive?”

“Until I see his body, I will not believe otherwise.”

“After weeks, the search has found no trace of the plane. No distress signals, no debris... No idea which direction it disappeared to after it lost contact. It's wild country out there. Harsh land. Harsh people.”

“I know.”

He studied her again, her confidence tentatively scaffolded over a faint glow of hope. Perhaps he had gone too far, for the sake of answers that did not exist. He nodded. “Let me know if there is anything I can do.”

“Thank you for being part of the All Star Camp. Hiruma would want us to indoctrinate a new generation of football stars…” she said, and he could almost make out the sound of a smile hiding behind her words, but it did not break through to her face. “But making some children feel special this week would be enough, I think.”

Gomery allowed himself a smirk—in a way it was a show of respect to memory of that madman, be he alive or dead. Then he bowed and turned to take his leave.

“Oh, and General…” Mamori added as he began to walk away. “If there is any information coming from your country, I would pay a fair price for it.”

It was his turn to be defiant. “I would not take your money.”

“Maybe you wouldn't, but if someone else needs convincing...”

“I understand. I will do what I can.”

 

~*~

 

The final game of the World Youth All Star Reunion Spring Camp Tournament was hard fought by all the participants, but all the while the organizers kept one eye on the sky, watching for fireworks or a military helicopter to announce the return of Hiruma Youichi.  A radio set up the sidelines was manned at all times by a large, round man, waiting for anxiously for breaking news. But there were no explosions and no interruptions to the regularly scheduled news program. The closing ceremony ended and the participants went home, but Hiruma and the missing plane had not been found.

 

~*~

 

Taki Suzuna was faithful to the old adage: dress for the job you want.

Sure, she and Mr. Takekura went way back and he had only called her in to ask for a favor, but she had immediately reached for her power suit and heels. Suzuna had been helping out with the accounts at Takekura Enterprises Int’l Ltd a couple hours a week ever since she got back from her year-long trip across India and southeast Asia. She had been completely broke at that point but she had sworn she would rather go into debt than go back to working retail, so it had been a relief when Hiruma had offered her some money on the side to help manage the accounts. She had figured she could eventually work her way up to more hours, but she never imagined it would be under these circumstances. It gave her a pit in her stomach, but life went on and the bills had to be paid.

 _Yoshhh…!_ Even though she was a full five minutes late, she paused outside the office door to adjust her wardrobe and check her hair. She was just preparing herself to burst in panting heartfelt apologies when she caught the sound of voices. Suzuna peeked through the crack of the door and held her breath. She knew both the people inside. They had been the closest to him, of everyone.

“Why was he on that plane?” Mamori’s face was turned from view. The question was firm, but she sounded tired.

Suzuna could see Musashi’s expression, but he was difficult to read. He seemed more tired than Mamori. “Why are you asking me?”

“He tells you things.”

“I always thought it was you he told things to.”

“Gen, please…” Mamori sighed. “The simplest explanation turned out to be wrong. Thank goodness. But there has to be an explanation.”

“Look... We've been expanding. Getting international clients. He's been the one dealing with all that, you know I'm not concerned with growing the business. I just want to make ends meet and pay the bills, feed our families... But once he gets an idea in his head…”

“I know. There is no stopping him. I'm not blaming you. I just need to know the reason. Why was he on that plane?”

“He was going to meet a potential client. We have a bid on a waterfront project in some speculative economic city development in Militaria. It's a small country but it’s a flashy gig. Of course he couldn't resist.”

Mamori repeated the question. “Why was he on that plane?”

“I'm sorry,” he shrugged in futility, “It was just a coincidence. I wish it was different.”

“That is not an answer.” Mamori’s voice raised slightly but she controlled it quickly. “He loves being in the pilot seat; he would never fly commercial without a reason. Why?”

“He said the plane he uses was out for repairs. It wouldn’t be ready in time for the meeting. That's all.”

“I see.” Her tension seemed to subside but she still seemed troubled. But then, it was only natural that she would be upset.

Musashi put a hand to his temple. “Anezaki... I know it must be hard for you. It is hard enough for me, I can't imagine how it is for you. It's terrible, and it is hard to believe, but it is just a coincidence.”

“Is that what you believe?” She gave him a heavy stare. When he did not reply she continued, “Do you really believe it is a coincidence that that plane disappeared with Hiruma Youichi on it?”

“Planes have disappeared before without Hiruma Youichi on them.”

Suzuna willed every muscle to be still as silence fell between them. She wished she could see Mamori’s face. When the woman spoke again it was barely a whisper.

“When he left that day, he knew something was going to happen.”

Musashi’s eyebrows creased. “Did he say something to you?”

“He didn't tell me anything but I could tell. He knew.”

Musashi contemplated her words but said nothing. Suzuna whipped out her phone and punched out a hurried message: _We have to meet ASAP!!_

“There are a thousand possibilities of what might have happened and Hiruma being dead is only one of them.” Mamori reminded him. “Whatever the odds might be for an ordinary person, they do not apply to him. You know that better than anyone!”

“Yeah, I know that, but what am I supposed to say?”

“Hiruma knew something was going to happen on that trip. If someone was after him, maybe he thought flying commercial would protect him.”

“You think someone was after him?”

“I don't know... I don't know!” She shook her head so violently a lock of hair fell from the clip that held it back. “I thought you might know something. All I know is this was not a coincidence.”

Suzuna jumped as her phone bleeped loudly in her hands. The other two turned their stares toward her. She died inside. _Oh god, I’m the worst spy…_ She switched her phone to silent and opened the door.

“Excuse me… I’m sorry I’m late.” She took a deep breath. She had to say something, but what could she possibly say?  “Mamo-nee, I'm so sorry about You-nii...”

“Thank you, Suzuna.” Mamori picked up her handbag from the chair, trying to tuck her hair back in place. “I’ll leave you two. Excuse me.”

When she had gone Suzuna sat on the edge of her seat, still buzzing from everything she had overheard. _You-nii knew? You-nii might be alive?_

Musashi looked drained. “Suzuna, I'm sorry to trouble you with this but we are desperate.”

“No worries Mushasyan,” she assured him with confidence, “You-nii showed me everything!”

“What do you mean, everything?”

Suzuna counted each point on her fingers. “All the passwords, the closed files, the open accounts, the pending bids, the suppliers… Everything!”

“I see.” Musashi frowned and cast an unsettled glance toward the door where Mamori had left.  “Can I count on you to keep on top of things for a bit? We'll figure out which projects we can keep going without him and which ones we'll have to drop as we go.”

“No problem. I'm on it!”

The moment Suzuna stepped out of the office she pulled out her phone and sent her reply.

_Get ready to make a detective comeback, Sena! We’re gonna solve the case of the missing plane and the mysterious disappearance of Hiruma Youichi!_

 

~*~

 

Sena and Panther were waiting in the living room, sipping some tea and watching Zakari build an elaborate city out of blocks populated with dinosaurs, when Mamori came home.  Yume was the first to burst in from the entry, all limbs, jumping and spinning through the hall. When she spotted them she only stopped long enough to lean against the couch with a dazzling grin before launching back down the hall. “Ah!! Mama-mori!! Uncle Sena is here! And Panther!”

Before Mamori could reply she was off again, sashaying into the kitchen. “Hey Gramma! What’s for dinner? It smells so so good!”

“Yume! Please put your shoes away properly.” Mamori called after her. To their amazement the girl returned promptly, bobbing in some kind of waltz before she disappeared into the entrance. Mamori held out the grocery bag as she passed again and she snatched it enthusiastically, swooping away to the kitchen without a hint of complaint.

“Hey Mamorineesan,” Sena greeted Mamori as she entered the living room. “Your mom said we could wait here until you got back. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course, Sena, don’t be silly. Yume’s dance class went a bit late, I hope you weren’t waiting too long. Patrick Spencer, welcome to our home. It’s so nice you came. It’s a lovely surprise.” Her voice was kind, but Mamori did not smile. Sena tried to remember if he had seen her smile at all since the plane disappeared.

Panther stood to return the greeting. “Thanks. You can call me Panther, though.”

Mamori blinked. “But that is not your name.”

“It’s okay, everyone calls me that,” he assured her. “It’s practically my name.”

“But it is not your name,” she reminded him.

“No…” he smiled quizzically, unsure how to respond.

She nodded as though her point had been made. “So, Patrick Spencer, you are still in Japan. When do you plan to go back?”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” he replied playfully.

“Oh!” Mamori straightened self-consciously, oblivious to his joke. “I didn’t mean it like that! It has been a week since the spring camp ended and it’s my job to make sure everything is taken care of to your satisfaction. The other players have gone back. You checked out of the hotel we booked you, but you are still here.”

“Yeah, just thought I’d enjoy your country a little longer, like a vacation.” Panther sank back into the couch and stretched his arms behind his head. “It’s pretty far from home so I figured I’d make the most of it, you know?”

“Yes…” she repeated. “It is pretty far.”

“I offered for Panther-kun to stay with me,” Sena added.

“It’s perfect!” Panther nodded with a laugh, patting Sena on the shoulder. “This guy is giving me a real authentic Japanese experience!”

“Sena! Really? Is your mother okay with this?”

“You know her,” Sena felt a drop of sweat accumulate above his left eyebrow. His mother was not the most capable hostess, but she was enthusiastic. “She’s thrilled, don’t worry.”

“Are you sure?” Mamori frowned.

Zakari looked up from his project with an important announcement. “Uncle Sena brought cake!”

The accommodations debate was promptly forgotten. Mamori shot a furtive glance around the room but saw nothing that resembled cake.

“It’s in the kitchen,” Sena explained. “It needs refrigeration,”

“Oh, Sena… you are too kind.” Dessert was usually a sure way to put a light in Mamori’s eyes, but instead she seemed saddened by the gesture. “I took some cakes to the temple today after visiting the orphanage. I’ve been worried about Kurita. Have you gone to see him since he quit at Takekura?”

That was Mamori. Always worried about someone else.

“Not yet,” Sena admitted. After the tournament ended Kurita decided to take on full management of his family’s temple. Up until then, working part-time at Takekura had kept him connected to the rest of the gang at a fairly reliable interval. Mamori was not the only one who was worried about the isolation that working at the temple might create for him. “How is he?”

“He seems… fine.” She shook her head as if to clear it of a cloud of doubts. “He seems to be doing okay, really.”

Sena’s heart ached at her confusion. “I’ll go see him tomorrow, I promise.” He hesitated a moment before he continued. “We came to check that you were doing okay, actually… It’s been a week since… since the tournament ended. Are you alright?”

It was only after the closing ceremony had ended and Hiruma was still nowhere to be found that Sena had realized he had been clinging to the hope that at any moment his familiar silhouette would appear, walking casually onto the field through a cloud of smoke. It hit him hard to face the fact that Hiruma’s disappearance had not been just some terrible joke after all. For the better part of the week before he had barely eaten,  unable to think about anything except the deep pit inside himself that threatened to swallow him. Luckily Panther had been staying with him, or he might have fallen in. He was patient and supportive at first, then gradually joking and coaxing him back to reality with a smile. And it was Panther, too, who had wondered aloud how Hiruma’s family must be handling things. It shook Sena out of his own suffering enough that he finally thought to check in on them. He only hoped the cake would make up for being so slow.

There was a full second of delay before Mamori's response, which she delivered with all the practicality of a manager. “Things have been busy with the new school year starting. There wasn’t much time to prepare over the break because of the spring camp, but I’ve nearly caught up now. There are always so many meetings at the start of the year but it feels like there are more this year.”

“That sounds… tiring.” Sena had learnt a thing or two about meetings but as a salaryman that was an obvious part of his job description. Mamori, on the other hand, was a kindergarten teacher. It didn’t seem fair.  “What about the new kids? I bet they love Mamori-sensei!”

The reminder brought warmth to her expression, and Sena felt a tiny triumph. “Oh, the new students are so very cute, of course. But it’s hard for the young ones to be on their own for the first time.”

“I bet dealing with the parents is even harder.” Panther attempted a joke.

Sena paled and watched a wave of sadness wash away Mamori’s little glow. He hadn’t thought to warn his guest that certain topics might be off-limits. The spring camp fundraiser had not been for some random charity; the orphanage was in her school district. Every year, some of Mamori’s students had no parents. The orphans who had recently gone missing had graduated from her kindergarten only a year before. The series of disappearances had been tragic precursors to Hiruma’s own disappearance. Sena realized he should have brought two cakes.

To Sena’s surprise, Mamori managed to recover enough to respond with a joke of her own. “Speaking of parents, I happen to be one of those lucky parents who has received two calls from the homeroom teacher in the first week alone.”

In an attempt to support her brave front, Sena teased the boy who was still playing on the floor, “Zak-kun, have you been causing trouble again?”

“It wasn’t me!!” the boy grumbled immediately.

“Heh heh, I’m sorry,” Sena tried to backtrack, “I was only kidding, I know it wasn’t you! I guess Yu-chan’s first week in junior high was rough?”

The name conjured the girl who peeked in from the doorway. “It was great! And super fun! Junior high is the best!”

“So, Yume,” Sena tried to put on a stern, grown-up expression like he had seen Mamori do so many times. “What did your teacher call home about?”

Yume screwed up her face as if the memory were a bad smell. “She said I’m too loud. And I don’t wait in line properly. And a bunch of things...”

“Do teachers really call home about things like that? Are you sure you didn’t make someone cry?”

“I didn’t make anyone do anything!”

“Yume, please go wash up before dinner.” Mamori intervened tactfully.

“What about Zak!?”

“Zak too, please.”

Zakari left his block metropolis calmly but as he passed his sister he burst into a run that resulted in a mad race between the two up the stairs. Sena waited until they disappeared. “So she actually made someone cry?”

“Well, as she said, she didn’t make anyone do anything,” Mamori said. “But after one of her intense lectures… which may have included threats against their person… a few of her classmates were crying, yes.”

“ ‘Intense lectures’…” Sena repeated. “Was it about Hiruma?”

Mamori nodded. “Someone foolishly suggested the American football club might be cancelled since he still hasn’t returned. Clubs start next week.”

“Wait, wait,” Panther interrupted, “Let me check that I’m following. Are you saying Hiruma was coaching a junior high football club? That’s totally priceless!”

“I know it might seem a bit unlikely, but the kids seem to love him.” Sena chuckled. “I want to say ‘despite his unorthodox methods’ but it is probably more accurate to say it’s ‘because of’ them.”

“No, no, I can totally see it!”

Sena’s laughter fell as he caught Mamori’s exhausted expression. He cleared his throat. “It must be hard for Yu-chan. I know she never stopped talking about how she was going to join the football club once she got to junior high.”

Yume’s face appeared again, freshly washed. “I am going to join. Dad promised!”

“What about dance?” Panther asked.

“And dance too!” she replied. “Dance is on Sundays! And kendo is on Saturdays!”

“This girl plans to do everything,” Mamori observed, then added with a pointed tone, “Just as long as she can keep her marks up.”

“Teeheehee… no problemo Mama-chan!”

“Well, it’s lucky you have more than one activity, if the amefuto club is cancelled.” Sena was only trying to see the best in the situation, but he had miscalculated terribly. Yume turned on him with heat in her eyes.

“It will not be cancelled!”

Sena instinctively took a step back, slightly fearful for his personal safety, but Mamori interceded. “Yu-chan, the club can’t open without a coach. You know that.”

“He’s just late. It’s going to open late, that’s all. He’ll be back in time for the spring tournament, for sure.”

“Yume, clubs don’t work like that. What on earth are your poor teachers going to do with those amefuto club members wandering around? They can’t just wait for a coach to show up eventually. They’ll have to join other clubs.”

(“Did she just make this into a student-teacher time management issue?” Sena and Panther conferred with one another.)

“Dad promised!”

“Your father is not here.” Each syllable cut in a sharp departure from Mamori’s earlier gently poised exhaustion. Sena and Panther felt a silence grip their lungs. Yume, however, was not intimidated. She balled up a fist of determination that shook as though she might easily punch someone with it.

“I’ll coach it, then!” she declared with the confidence only a pre-teen could master.

“Yume…”

Sena could only watch helplessly. “Yu-chan…”

“Can I do it?”

Mamori, Sena and Yume turned their stares on the tall American who leaned back comfortably on the couch wearing guest slippers and a smile.  

“You need someone to coach the club, right?” Panther gestured to himself as though they still hadn’t noticed him. “I can do it.”

It was Yume who recovered from speechlessness first. “Really!? Yeah!!! Alright!!!” She rushed to exchange a high-five with him then bounced around the room with excitement, punctuating her jumps with the periodic spin.

“You are very kind, Patrick Spencer,” Mamori thanked him, “but we will deal with the situation.”

“Hey, I thought I said stop with that ‘Patrick Spencer’ business already!” He raised an eyebrow. “And it seems like the problem was you didn’t have anyone to coach. But now you do.”

“We will figure something out. We would not want to trouble you further.”

“Further?” Panther was puzzled. “Sena, what is she talking about?”

“I think she means because you did so much at the All Star Camp, we’re in your debt.”

“Okay, I get that. But I’m offering… so what’s the problem?”

“Yeah, Mama-mori, what’s the problem?” Yume blinked at her expectantly.

“First of all, clubs meet every day. Hiruma had them meeting before and after school, and on Saturdays…”

“That’s a good schedule.” Panther’s smile was undefeated. “But what about kendo?”

“It’s not until the afternoon!!!!” Yume replied.

“It’s your vacation,” Mamori continued. “It would be impossible for you to travel outside the city.”

“But I’d be living in Tokyo! I’ll never run out of things to see here.”

“And… we don’t know…” Mamori began, but her sentence was only fragments, “…how long…”

He shrugged. “I’m flexible.”

Mamori looked at him doubtfully. “But it would take so much of your time, of your vacation.”

“Heh, I happen to think football is really fun. And coaching kids is fun, too. And this kid right here in particular seems alright. I think it sounds like a great vacation.”

“Hmm…” Mamori had run out of objections. She paused a moment to think things through. “Well… I guess I can ask the principal… Maybe, if we get the parent association to approve…. Hmm… Do you have a criminal record?”

Panther tried to scowl but only managed to grin wider. “Are you asking because I’m Black?”

“Oh! No no no!!” Mamori realized how it sounded and waved her hands frantically to erase the mistake, “I just… because working with kids, you need all kinds of clearance and the paperwork takes a lot of time and it can be a big headache!”

“Hahaha! Don’t worry, my record is clean, thanks to my incredible good sense,” he winked, “I even kept your husband out of trouble, with my know-how about staying on the right side of the law.”

“Oh…” she breathed, blinking slowly like in a dream, but in a moment she was back to her no-nonsense self. “We are not married, actually. But I’m sure Hiruma caused you a lot of trouble, so I apologize. And thank you.”

Panther stared at her a moment, then shook his head, “Heh… That guy is not as smart as he makes himself out to be.”

“Well, when it comes to rules, unless they are for football, he tends to think of them as optional. Laws are included in that, unfortunately.”

“That’s not really what I meant…”

“Um… Mamorineesan,” Sena hesitated to point out the obvious, but it seemed pertinent. “Wouldn’t you have Panther’s background check on file from the All Star Camp?” The fact Mamori had not thought of it already only escalated his concerns about how she was dealing with everything. “I mean, he worked with at-risk youth here for two weeks, you probably already have all the papers he needs to volunteer with the club.”

Yume saw the victory in this fact immediately, running circles around the adults. “Yaaahhsssss, Panther’s gonna coach my team!!!”

“What about your Japanese?”

“I’ve been getting along okay so far. Like Sena said, I did the All Star Camp already. Is it going to be that different?”

“You had an assistant to translate then.”

“I’ll do it!” Yume leapt up with her arms raised high. “I can translate!”

“I don’t know…”

“Seriously, what’s the problem?”

“Mama, just say yes!”

Mamori gave Panther an intent look. “You would be far from home,” she said in a low voice, like a reminder or a warning.  

Panther did not reply at first, trying to interpret what lay behind that statement. When he finally spoke, it was only with half a smile. “To tell the truth… that’s the reason I want to stay. I don’t really want to go back to the US for a bit.”

It was unusual for Panther to drop his cheerful attitude. For a moment the room was quiet.

“It’s because of your grandma, isn’t it?” Sena asked cautiously. “I know she was really important to you.”

“Oh…” Terrible understanding opened Mamori’s eyes wide. “I’m so sorry.”

“She was pretty old, you know,” Panther made a gesture like a half-hearted shrug, that thin smile still clinging to his face. “It’s not like I’m trying to forget her, but it’s nice to have a break from the places she used to be. So that’s why I thought I would travel a bit before going back. I don’t need to see any historic sites or anything like that. Just want a little space to deal with it.”

He must have been conscious he had been uncharacteristically serious for longer than usual, because he added lightheartedly, “Anyway, why would I be in a hurry to go back a place where guys like me get killed by cops? I’d have to be crazy to rush back to that!”

There was a long silence as Mamori contemplated him. Sena and Yume glanced between the two, suddenly feeling like they somehow had intruded on a private conversation even though they had been there all along.

Panther stood to face her, putting aside the false buoyancy, “Look, maybe you don’t realize this, since apparently he never tells anyone anything, but Hiruma and I were close. If he needs help with something, I’m there, alright? It’s not a burden. He would do the same for me. Maybe in a crazy-assed way… but you hear what I’m saying?” he looked at her earnestly for a moment before putting on his biggest grin, as though they were sharing a secret joke. “Besides, it’s only till that reliable guy gets back, right?”

She didn’t quite smile back, but Sena watched as the heaviness that had enveloped her faded a little, replaced with a glow that was warm and grateful.

“That’s right,” Mamori nodded in assent, “I am sure Hiruma will appreciate your help.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 - Yes, technically Hiruma does not play against Russia in the World Cup but I really just wanted to have Rodchenko face off with Yume!
> 
> Re- orphanages. I know it sounds like I am trying to rip off a Charles Dickens novel here, but don't worry, none of the characters will be chimney sweeps. Believe it or not, there actually are orphanages in present day Japan.


	3. Dreads

“Mornin’ little lady...” Kid tipped his hat as he entered the Takekura office, bright and early.

“Kiddon, good morning!” Suzuna sang from behind the desk. She was a morning person anyway, but that day she had woken up with a very good feeling about the investigation. That was why she had decided to wear a detective hat as she scanned through the banking transactions, looking for clues.

Kid pressed his stamp on the attendance record book with his usual nonchalance, but lingered a moment to take in her attire with an amused expression. “Sitting in that desk there with a hat like that, a person might nearly mistake you for that guy himself.”

“Heh? I look like You-nii?” Suzuna blinked in confusion, then tested out an evil grin. “Kehkehkeh! Destroy them!! Yaa!”

“Well... in a manner of speaking,” Kid smiled uncertainly at her enthusiastic impression. “That guy always had some strange outfit or another. But this time of day he would be cackling into a phone, most likely.” He adjusted his Stetson in a gesture of farewell. “Well, have yourself a nice day, Miss.”

Suzuna jumped from her seat as he turned to leave. “Kiddon, hey hey! Wait a sec! Do you know anything about You-nii? Was he acting strangely before he disappeared? What was the last thing he said to you? Did he seem scared?”

Kid paused in the doorway. “So, that hat is not just for show...”

“I’m just trying to find out what happened to him.” She put all her optimism into her questions. “What do you know? Any clues?”

“Ah... myself, no, I don’t know anything. That guy was not really one to share his thoughts.”

Suzuna was not discouraged. “What about those phone calls? Did you overhear anything? What did he talk about?”

“Hmm...” Kid scratched his forehead just below the brim of his hat. “Now that I think of it, I remember he often was swearing about dreads. I thought it was strange. I didn’t think they were still close.”

“You-nii was talking with Agonne?!” Suzuna leaned across the desk. “Often?! Why?”

Kid shrugged. “I guess you would have to ask him.”

~*~

“A-A-Agon?” Sena took a napkin and wiped his hands under the table. He was a grown man. He had faced many scary people in his years of football, Agon included, but he couldn’t help still having the same reaction. He was not shaking, but his muscles were tense. He wanted to run. “Why are we meeting Agon?!”

Suzuna examined the menu, swinging her feet under the chair. “We’re following a lead!”

The detective game had been fun at first but Hiruma had been missing for nearly two months and none of their leads had amounted to anything. Suzuna seemed thrilled at this new development but it was hard to imagine that the breakthrough they had been waiting for would come from Agon. “Suzuna... Do you really think this is a good idea?”

“Don’t be silly, it’s going to be fine.” She dismissed his doubts with a wave of her hand.

Maybe she was right. It had been a long time since he had seen the man who had been so terrifying to him in high school. Time changed people. Sergeant – no, General Gomery was a prime example. At the All Star Camp he had been gallant compared to the person he had been at the World Youth Cup all that time ago. Maybe Agon had found inner peace over the years. He might have even gotten fat. But if he had been involved with Hiruma just before he disappeared...

“Ah, there he is!” Suzuna jumped up as she spied a man enter with signature dreadlocks, “Heeey! Agonne! Over here!”

Agon had not gotten fat. In fact, he seemed completely unchanged since high school, right down to the model of his sunglasses. Sena willed himself not to squirm as the intimidating man dropped into the seat beside him.

“If you twerps think you can buy me with a burger and soda, you are about to be very disappointed.”

“Yah! Agonne, order whatever you want! They have omelette rice!”

Agon did not bother to glance at the menu. “Coffee.”

“Okay!” Suzuna stood again and called after the waitress in a throwback to her cheerleading voice, which was probably not ideal for indoor use: “Three hot coffees please!”

Agon leaned comfortably in the chair, but his appraising gaze made Sena feel like he was being stalked by a predator. In a sense it was a nostalgic feeling.

“So, what do you want? Or are you trying to waste my time?”

Sena jumped when Suzuna nudged him. “Hey, since he’s your former teammate, maybe you should start,” she whispered.

“Um...” Sena cleared his throat, even though the term ‘teammate’ seemed more like a technicality. “Well, Agon-kun... we heard that you talked to Hiruma before he disappeared.”

“Yeah, I talked to him. So what?”

Suzuna could not resist swooping in. “What did he say? Did he tell you anything? Do you know what happened to him?

“I know pretty much what you know about what happened to that piece of trash, okay?” Agon shrugged off the barrage of questions.

“Hiruma called you from work.” Suzuna persisted. “What did you talk about?”

“We had business.”

“What kind of business?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Money-making business?”

“Maybe.”

“Clean money?”

“You are asking a few too many questions.”

Suzuna smiled into her coffee, quite pleased with the response. “So, not clean.”

Agon bared his teeth with an angry grimace. Sena evaluated the exits, but Suzuna pressed on.

“Was this ‘business’ the reason You-nii disappeared?”

“How would I know?”

“You helped him make dirty money...”

Agon leaned forward with a scowl and clenched his fist provocatively. Sena made a desperate attempt to mitigate the situation by reasoning with her. “Suzuna, do you really think Hiruma would do something so risky? He’s got a family to think of.”

“I’ll tell you this much.” Agon checked around them before he spoke. “The money I made was honest. You had better remember that. I earned it fair and square. I don’t need you spreading lies that could wind up getting me killed.”

“Killed...?” Sena blanched at the idea of something that could actually endanger Agon. Though he could not begin to imagine what it was, he knew it had to be something terrifying. It seemed like a good moment to retire from the detective business.

“Ah ha!” Suzuna pointed a finger at him triumphantly. “So you admit you were involved in something dangerous together!”

Agon did not reply except with a piercing stare. Suzuna held it as she sipped her drink with a pretty little smile, but Agon did not suddenly crack even after a long, tense, expectant silence. Finally Suzuna put the cup aside and framed a simple request. “Look, dirty money doesn’t show up in paperwork until it has been cleaned. If you just give us a clue where to look we can take it from there and we won’t bother you again.”

Agon scoffed. “Seems like those ears on your head are just there for decoration. I already told you, it is going to take a lot more than a free lunch to get me to say another word. You would have to make it worth my while.”

“Would I?” Suzuna contemplated him through long eyelashes. Agon responded to her gaze with an appraisal of his own. Sena glanced between two anxiously as the air around the table seemed to grow heavy.

“It’s Suzuna, right?” Agon seemed to be piecing together what he knew about her. “Deimon’s little pom-pom girl... Well, looks like you've filled out a bit at least. Still, I know footballers with bigger tits than you. Not my type.”

Sena felt a defensive panic grip his throat. Not only was his voice not working, but he could not even think of what to say in her defense. As he struggled to put together a proper string of words he glanced at Suzuna, expecting to see her face blistering with anger. To his surprise, however, she was strangely calm. More than calm, in fact... she seemed almost amused at the affront.

“You wouldn't even know what to do with me.” She smirked with a gaze that felt like a dare. Her mocking response provoked a series of expressions that flitted crossed Agon’s face: surprised anger, amusement, curiosity, and, finally, an ambition to rise to the challenge.

“You still cheerleading?” he asked conversationally.

Suzuna’s reply was a little too casual. “Nah, not since I graduated. I'm into yoga now.”

“Yeah? Same here.” It was impossible to tell truth from a lie from a platitude, but Sena had seen him in this mode before. He had always been relieved that Suzuna seemed to be exempt from Agon’s charming side, but his confidence in that fact was being shaken by their present exchange.

“Oh really?” It wasn’t Suzuna’s usual cheerfulness. It was cloyingly sweet. “I just got back from India visiting some ashram. It was pretty great.”

“Is that so...?” Agon was clearly barely listening. After staring at her a few moments longer he nodded to toward the door. “You wanna get a coffee?”

Sena glanced at the half-finished coffees on the table between them.

“I'll try anything once.” Suzuna received the invitation with an amused smile and Agon cracked a greedy grin. Sena watched in panic as the pair stood and walked out of the diner, leaving him alone with the bill.

~*~

Suzuna had already washed up and stretched and was almost finished dressing by the time Agon woke up. She was fairly certain she knew the best route to Takekura but she was less sure about how long it would take to get there. Luckily, no one at the office was likely to notice if she wore the same thing two days in a row. A tiny knot in her stomach reminded her that Hiruma would have noticed and teased her mercilessly until the end of time.

“Are you running off because you don’t like my company?” Agon stretched, still half covered in blankets.

“No, no, silly,” she assured him as she searched for the sock she swore she had been wearing when she arrived. “I am running off because I don’t like being homeless!”

He rolled toward the side of the bed and checked the time on his phone. “Joke’s on you, getting roped into the construction industry. Those idiots start too damn early.”

“Mmm, it’s fine with me!” She lifted the corner of the blanket, revealing the missing sock. As she slipped it on she noticed something moving toward her from the corner of her eye. Agon was pushing his cellphone across the bed, open to a new contact.

“In case you miss me.” Agon yawned. Why did everything he said have to sound sarcastic?

“I thought I wasn’t your type...” She cast a sly look at him but entered her number anyway. “Will I have to make an appointment?”

He muttered something as he pulled a shirt in a gaudy print over his head and wandered to the washroom. When he returned she tossed the phone back at him and he caught in mid-air without a glance. Suzuna shouldered her bag and faced him squarely, and he observed her expectant look with annoyed confusion.

“What? I hope you aren’t expecting a goodbye kiss.”

She tilted her head. “So... what do you know about You-nii?”

Agon let out a snarl of a sigh. “You’re still on about that?”

“I am investigating his disappearance and the clues lead me to you,” she reminded him, “I thought we had an understanding.”

“Are you joking? Are you a complete idiot?”

“Of course not, otherwise you would not have already admitted to me that you know something.” This type of argument was best delivered with disarming cheerfulness. “Unless you are an even bigger idiot. Is that what you are saying?”

“Look, it was a good time, but not worth risking my skin over.” He moved toward the door to encourage her to leave. “So, just be grateful for what you’ve got and go. And keep your nose out of other people’s business.”

“First you claim the money you made was clean,” she loaded her voice with curiosity, snapping at all his tightly-wound concerns that she would cause him trouble by making a mess of the investigation. It had to work. “But next you’re saying you’re mixed up with something that could get you killed. What kinds of conclusions is a girl supposed to draw all on her own?”

“How about that that bleach-blond trash got exactly what was coming to him? That is the conclusion that I would make. Because I am actually not an idiot. Dead is dead.”

Suzuna’s eyes widened and she clutched the strap of her bag a little tighter. Among Hiruma’s former teammates, no one dared to say out loud what Agon had stated so plainly. As if bound by some superstition, they either referred to the situation vaguely, leaving room for every possibility, or they did not speak of it at all.

“What’s with that face?” Agon goaded her. “He’s not coming back. Did he have you tricked into believing he was invincible? I’ve got news for you. The games he played in high school were just slight of hand. Kids’ stuff. But now you’re asking to come to the grown-up table.”

“I’m not a kid!” Suzuna stood a little taller. Were they all collectively trapped in a stage of denial, wanting to believe Hiruma might be alive? “Even if he... if he’s not coming back, I still want to find out what happened.”

“I am telling you to keep out of it.”

She stared at the ground to avoid his aggressive glare. He was serious about not telling her anything, but that denial was evidence of its own. “You and You-nii... you were involved with yakuza somehow... weren’t you?”

She met his eyes long enough to determine if she had guessed correctly. His stare did not waver, as though he was testing her resolve, then he opened the front door and gestured for her to exit.

“Later shortie. Try not to lose your job. Or get fat. Or get killed.”

“Agonne, wait a...!” Suzuna turned as the door closed behind her, leaving her alone in the apartment’s exterior hall. “Fuu!” she pouted at the door. She pulled out her phone on the impulse to message Sena about everything she had learned, but Agon’s repeated warnings echoed in her mind. Later. She would talk to Sena later.

Her phone shook briefly and the indicator light pulsed with a new message. It was confirmation that her appointment had been scheduled. She replied with elaborately embellished emoticons and skipped down the stairs to the bus stop.

~*~

Sena waited outside the convenience store with two pre-made lunches in hand. The line had not taken as long as usual. He wondered if he should try to meet Suzuna halfway, to save time. He was still pretty fast, but the danger was missing her completely if they didn’t take the same route. There were a lot of side streets between his office and Takekura Enterprises. He decided to wait. That was safest.

The trouble with waiting was he had a lot of time to think, which really meant a lot of time to try to not think about Suzuna and Agon. Not thinking about Suzuna and Agon meant trying to stop the nauseous twisting and turning inside as his organs conspired against him in a chaotic revolt. Agon alone inspired a pit in his stomach and tightness in his throat, a cold film of sweat and coiled muscles ready to launch into his fastest flight. He was _not_ thinking about Agon and Suzuna. Suzuna, who was like a sister to him... until she wasn’t. Suzuna, who took so many risks for him that he never properly acknowledged or returned. Suzuna, who still dragged him into her silly detective games as if nothing had happened between them. Because, after all, nothing had. Suzuna, who only saw the good in people. People like Agon. Suzuna and Agon. His stomach re-tied itself in a new and much more elaborate knot.

“What’cha thinking about?” a voice cooed over his shoulder. He jumped, so tense he sent the plastic containers flying. In a panic he narrowly managed to rescue them from a terrible fate on the ground.

“Su-Su-Suzuna! Hi, hey, nice day, isn’t it!?” He hoped his smile didn’t look as nervous as he felt.

“Ya! It’s a beautiful day to eat outside!” she smiled back. “Everything is going according to plan!”

“Why? What happened?” He was consumed with curiosity. Was she going to explain everything?

“The plan to eat outside today,” she reminded him. “It would have been ruined if it had rained.” She took the box from the top and lead the way to the nearby park.

“Oh, of course.” Sena followed her, feeling a bit sheepish. What plan did he think she meant?

They approached an empty bench in the middle of the park and Suzuna examined it from all angles. If he had taken a plastic bag for their lunches, she could have just sat on it without worrying about ruining her skirt... not to mention he would not have nearly dropped them earlier, but that was in the past. But next she looked around the bench, eyeing the nearest bushes and bystanders with suspicion. Finally she sat, forcing herself to look casual and only partially succeeding.

“Let’s eat!” she commanded.

Sena sat beside her with new paranoia that they were being followed. “Suzuna, what’s going on?”

“Shh!” She glanced around before she whispered, “Try not to move your lips when you talk.”

“What? Why?” He tried his best to comply, but he was really not the best person for that kind of intrigue. “Are you being followed? Is it the secret service?!” There were so many salarymen in the park on their lunch break, every last one of them wearing a suit. That man wearing sunglasses standing near the statue was too far away to tell if he wore an earpiece. Sena took a bite of rice to keep his teeth from chattering.

“No, no.” Suzuna assured him, and he allowed himself to relax. Then she continued, “It’s the yakuza.”

The rice that had been in his mouth shot through the air. “YA--!? YA-A---?! Yaku--”

“SHH!!!”

“Sorry,” he dropped his voice again. “What are you saying?!!?”

“You-nii was involved with them somehow.”

Sena was speechless at first. Then he said some words. “No way. No way. It’s impossible.” When he heard them spoken out loud he knew they were only true of how he felt, not of what was realistic in the actual world. “I mean... it’s possible. I just... I don’t like it.”

Suzuna nodded, watching birds scavenge a meal from the path as she nibbled on her lunch. “I know. But Mamo-nee thought someone might be after him when the plane disappeared. This could explain it.”

Sena shook his head again. “Ten years ago, maybe I would have believed it. Actually, I would be surprised if he wasn’t involved with them in college, in one way or another. But I can’t believe that he would put Mamori-neesan and the kids at risk like that. Underneath that reckless exterior of his, he has some sense of responsibility, you know.”

“Ya! Maybe it’s something from ten years ago that has come back to haunt him!” Suzuna suggested.

“Like what? Bad gambling debt? That is definitely not possible. Hiruma might be willing to lose everything, but he would never go into debt.”

“Maybe he was winning too much, and made enemies.”

“I guess,” Sena tried to make sense of her theory. “Enemies who hold a grudge for years...? And are willing to take down a plane?”

“I know, it doesn’t make sense.” She didn’t quite pout, but her thoughtful expression was still rather cute. “There is something else that doesn’t fit. Gambling makes sense for You-nii, but what about Agonne?”

Sena felt his brain flood again. He had gone minutes without thinking about Agonne-- err, Agon.

“I’m going to try to get more information. I think I’m getting close,” she continued, oblivious to his internal seizure. “But about the plane... I have some news about them as well.”

“ ‘Them’...? How many planes are we talking about?”

“Well, two. The missing plane, and the plane that You-nii didn’t take.”

Sena stared at her, no less confused.

“Mamo-nee said that when You-nii goes on business trips he usually flies the plane himself,” she explained before biting into a soggy tempura shrimp. “He doeshn't haff his own plane, sho I tracked down the placsh he normally borrosh them from.”

“Wow... Suzuna...” Sena’s stare transformed into a look of bewilderment and admiration. Maybe the detective thing was more than a game to her. “Where was it? What did you find out?”

She cupped her hand to whisper in his ear. “It’s from the American military base...”

Of course. Of course. No surprises there. Actually this was quite logical, and Sena was certain that if he thought back hard enough he might even remember Hiruma mentioning it. Not that Hiruma ever mentioned anything. Regardless, if this plane “borrowing” had been going on since high school it would explain a few things. How could he forget that time Hiruma landed a fighter jet on the athletic grounds of Deimon High?

“We’re going to visit them next week.” Suzuna informed him, closing the lid of her empty lunch.

“Go? Visit?!! The military base!?!” Sena couldn’t help his reaction. Once again, the investigation seemed more intense than he was comfortable with. “Why?! Can’t you just ask them questions by phone?”

“Detectives always go to the scene. You never know what you might find.”

The muscles in his legs twitched. “I probably can’t take time off work. We’re busy these days.”

“I said we’d go on Sunday. You have Sundays off, don’t you?”

“They’re open on Sundays?” Sena asked skeptically.

“They aren’t really ‘open’ but they also never really close. Anyway, I think they are friends with You-nii, so maybe they are doing it as a favor? Aren’t you excited to see a military base from the inside?”

“Yeah, that's... really great.” There was no getting out of it. He checked his watch. He had plenty of time to get back to the office, but he was anxious for this whole thing to be over. “Was there anything else?”

“Just one thing.”

“Oh, right, something about the missing plane?”

“Yeah. What do you know about SoraAir, Sena?”

“Err... just what most people know, I guess. They’re a small company. I guess they are known for discount flights to countries that aren’t very popular.”

“Right!” She sounded pleased with his response. “Well, I looked into them a bit more, with the new information I obtained in mind.”

Once again Sena tried to ignore how she had obtained the new information and nodded for her to continue.

“It turns out that SoraAir is a shell company.”

“A shell company? What does that even mean?”

“It’s just a front. It’s controlled by a shadow board, and every company that owns major shares in SoraAir has links to a single yakuza dynasty. It has operations in all the countries SoraAir flies to.”

The blood drained from his face and puddled in his feet. It had been bad enough imagining Hiruma involved with some small-time gambling operation. Connecting the missing plane to an international network of organized crime was another level entirely.

Suzuna, on the other hand, looked excited about the discovery. “Riko-chan says it’s not exactly a secret, but it wasn’t mentioned in the news coverage since the reporters know better unless they want to get threats. Also, most of the passengers on the missing flight had yakuza connections! It actually explains a lot, this little piece of information.”

Sena gulped back the fear that was holding his tongue hostage and forced himself to say what he believed, as unpopular as it might sound to the lead investigator. “Suzuna... I think... we... I think we should drop the case.”

“Sena!” The glare she shot at him held a mix of hurt and disappointment, but it was mostly angry. “How can you say that?”

“This is serious.”

“I know that! Probably better than you!”

“This isn’t something to be playing detective about. It’s actually dangerous. Even Agon is afraid.”

“Agon is not afraid. Come on, you know him!”

“Uh, he’s scary but he’s a smart guy. He told us not to get mixed up in this.”

“He just wants a boring life with no surprises and no adventure! Like another certain person I know.”

This time she pouted, but he was too busy trying to come to grips with what she had implied to notice. Her intonation had been pointed. Had she just compared him to Agon?! The conversation was obviously spiralling out of control. And if he didn’t leave soon he would really be late. “Look, I have to go. Just promise me you won’t look into this any more. Please.”

He started down the path back toward the street but she didn’t follow. “I won’t. I would never promise something like that.”

“Suzuna, come on. I just don’t want anyth--”

“What about You-nii!?” She was still staring at him with those accusing eyes. “I thought you cared about him!”

She really knew how to stop him in his tracks. He was waiting on the empty field after the closing ceremony again, all alone. “Of course I do. But, even Hiruma... might... he might be...”

“You’ve given up on him.” She folded her arms across her chest and glowered at him again. “Fine! I didn’t think you were like _that_ , but I guess I was wrong.”

“Suzuna...” Sena gulped back the flash of guilt her words provoked. She couldn’t understand how he felt.

“What about Mamo-nee? She’s still here and she still believes in him!”

“Mamori?! Suzuna, Mamori-neesan would be the first person to forbid you from getting messed up in this! You haven’t even told her you’re on the case, have you?”

Suzuna pressed her lips together in frustration. So he had guessed right. The clock continued to tick but before he could leave he had to make sure she wasn’t going to do something stupid. “Suzuna, think about it. If they got Hiruma, what makes you think we would have any chance getting through this alive? We’ve just got to take care of the people we still have. No one else needs to get hurt.”

“Fine. Sena. Go back to your little desk! Run and don’t be late!” She was furious, but in the corners of her eyes something glittered. “Just remember this: if it were you, You-nii would risk his life to find you, and even if he was too late, he would punish everyone responsible!!”

Sena turned so she couldn’t see his face and ran as fast as he could with a suit and tie and lump in his throat. Maybe Hiruma would have risked everything, but Hiruma always came back. Hiruma betrayed him first. With this they were even.

 

 


	4. Traitor

The front door slid open a little after dark with a gentle clatter.

“Yu-chan, you know if the boys bother you, you can always tell me.” Panther was saying.

“Ha! I can handle those dumb boys!” the girl boasted, kicking off her shoes and dropping her bag on the floor. Then she called dutifully and loudly into the house, “I’m back!”

“I’m here too.” Panther echoed.

“Welcome home!” Mami greeted them, a finger marking the page of a new suspense novel. “Come in, Panther-kun.”

“Panther!!!!” Zakari rushed them and grabbed Panther in a hug around his waist. Panther grappled the boy into his arms, carrying him halfway through the house hoisted over his shoulders as Zak shrieked with delight.

“We saved you some curry rice.” Mami informed him. “Mrs Kobayakawa said she has left-overs set aside for you too, if you prefer.”

“Oh, I can probably take care of both of them somehow... wouldn’t want good food to go to waste!” Panther grinned. “ _Mottainai_ , right?”

It had become routine for Panther to walk home with Yume after practice, more because their routes were conveniently identical than for any other reason. Panther liked to joke the girl kept him out of trouble, or at least from getting lost. With the spring tournament finals just around the corner, practice had ended later than usual that day. Alone at the table, the professional athlete and junior high student shoveled their meals into their faces in perfect unison.

“Patrick Spencer, may I speak with you?” Mamori entered with a business-like tone.

“Uh oh, your mom’s in manager mode!” Panther winked at Yume who grinned back impishly.

“Yu-chan, if you’re done can you go get ready for tomorrow?” Mamori suggested. With a clatter of dishes the girl cleared the table and skipped out of the room.

“Looks like she’s still got energy to spare. I guess I really don’t work those kids hard enough,” Panther observed as he finished his plate. Mamori had taken Yume’s place at the table and was looking at him pensively. “What is it? Something on my face?”

“Oh! No, no!” Mamori started with surprise, suddenly aware she had been staring. “I just wanted to... check with you. About your travel visa.”

“Yeah...it’s expiring soon, isn’t it?” He didn’t say what she must have been thinking. Three months and Hiruma had still not returned. “Are they going to deport me?”

“Well, if you apply for a new visa they will automatically extend your current one for two months so they can process the application. Even if the new visa is denied, that would bring you to the end of the summer at least,” she told him. With a sideways glance she added, “If... you want to stay.”

“Of course, I’ve gotta finish the season.” Panther grinned at her confidently to wipe the doubts from her mind. “But do you think they won’t let me renew it? Being a celebrity I’ve sort of gotten used to getting whatever I want, I guess. But this isn’t my turf.”

“I don’t have a lot of experience with it, so I’m not really sure. What I mean is... you don’t have to stay past the summer.” She looked at him like a grown-up who had no time for nonsense. They were both technically grown-ups of course, but Mamori seemed especially good at acting the part. “I know the team kids would appreciate it if you could finish this semester. But for the Fall term, we could try to find someone else. Or we could...”

“Come on, they can’t cancel the club. The Fall tournament is the real tournament!” Panther stood and slipped his empty dish into the dishwater. “Spring was just a warm-up. Those kids worked too hard to cancel the club. I’ll stay.”

“Patrick...” Mamori sighed. For once she dropped his family name and it sounded strange. It was really much too long to say every time anyway, but she had been so conscientious for all these months. “Please think about this carefully. I’m worried about you.”

Even if the sentiment was rather sweet, Panther’s gut reaction was to burst out laughing and he didn’t hold back. “Hahaha, what?! Oh man, Sena was not messing around when he told me about you. Are you serious?”

Mamori seemed unaffected by his reaction. “Of course.”

“Why on earth would you be worried about me?” he wiped a laughter-induced tear from his eye.

“You are a runner. Like Sena,” she replied simply.

“O...kay...” he studied her face, trying to decode the cryptic message.

She held his eyes a long, heavy moment. “Eventually you need to face things head on.”

Her stare had sobered him and her words more so. “I think you’ve got me wrong.”

“LIARS!!” Yume’s shout filtered into the kitchen as clear as if she were in the room with them, but she was yelling at someone else.

“That’s just what they said!” Zakari might have been less aggressive than his sister, but he had developed a stubbornness to match.

Mamori sighed and only barely resisted rolling her eyes, but Panther caught her expression. Arguing again. It was far from an unprecedented event.

“They’re LYING!!”

“You don’t know that!” Zak countered.

Yume’s voice dropped to a dangerous, threatening chill. “What did you just say?”

“If they’re lying. You don’t know. Nobody knows.”

“How dare you!!!?”

“Ow!” There was a sound of a thud as Zak hit the floor, but he didn’t back down. “What if they’re right?”

“Shut up!! Just shut up!!!”

“Ow! Yu-nee!!” Zakari cried out in pain. “Stop it!!”

“I’ll kill you!!”

Mamori stood so abruptly she nearly overturned her chair and rushed to toward the screaming children as the fight moved beyond a battle of words to a full-on physical altercation. Panther followed her to the hall where they found the small boy tackled to the ground by his sister. Zak whimpered and struggled to escape, but was pinned under her knees as she pulled his hair with one hand and punched at him with the other.

“If he’s alive then why isn’t he here?” Zak cried from under her blows, guarding his face with an arm. Mami appeared in the living room doorway, alarmed.

“Traitor!!!!”

“Yume!” Mamori commanded, reluctant to get too close to the flailing limbs of the eleven-year-old. “Let your brother go this instant!”

Yume continued her assault, unable to hear her mother through her own screams that were becoming sobs. As tears filled her eyes and blinded her, her fists missed their target. Panther caught Yume’s hands and worked her fingers open to let her brother’s hair slip through, then pulled her back enough that Zak could roll away, still bawling.

“I HATE YOU!!” Yume twisted away and emptied her lungs for one last remark that scraped out of her throat, angry against her tears. Then she fled up the stairs with her face buried in her sleeve. Mamori exchanged an exasperated look with her mother, who followed the girl upstairs, shaking her head in dismay. It was not long before they heard a door slam shut.

In the hall it was quieter without Yume’s screaming, but Zak was still collapsed in long, bellowing cries. Panther rubbed his back and coaxed him to sit up. “Hey little bro, come on... it’s okay...”

The boy couldn’t stop weeping. His lip was swollen and his face was streaked with tears and mucus but was clear of bruises. Mamori checked under his shirt. Sure enough, marks of color were blooming underneath. “That girl...” she whispered as though the words were a curse.

“No blood, at least.” Panther said softly, for once leaving his joking tone aside.

“At least.” Mamori agreed. She disappeared down the hall and returned with a box of tissues to wipe her son’s face as he continued to sob. “Does it hurt?”

Zakari nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but it didn’t slow the tears.

“I can just hear your father now. Crying won’t make it hurt less, right? I’m sure he would say that, if he were here. Right?” Mamori spoke quietly, as if to make sure no one would hear, even though Panther was as close to her as Zakari was. He could see every detail of her face, the contradiction of being hopeful and strong and forsaken all at once.

“I’m n-no-o-ot...” The boy breathed harder, obviously trying to fight back the sobs, but his eyes crushed closed and thrust a new wave of tears down his face.

“Hey, don’t listen to that, Zak,” Panther shook his head and rubbed his shoulder. “It’s okay to cry.”

The sobs paused in a hiccup as Zakari looked up at him, woeful but also surprised and grateful, before bawling again, heart-wrenchingly raw. Panther wrapped his arms around him and held the boy close. Kneeling beside them, Mamori stroked Zakari’s hair until the cries turned to shuddering breaths. Eventually the rise and fall of his lungs found a slow, steady cadence interrupted only by the occasional sigh. His eyes drooped closed on the edge of sleep.

“I can put him to bed.” Mamori offered in a low voice.

Panther imagined the transfer, and all the opportunities that the precious peace they had gained might be disrupted. “Maybe I should do it.”

Mamori nodded. “Okay. I’ll check on Yu-chan. Thank you.”

After Zakari was tucked in, Panther collapsed on the couch. Stretching his arms across the back he could almost reach both sides. “Whew! Complete meltdown averted.”

Mamori returned from checking on everyone and dropped onto the couch herself with an enormous sigh. “This time.”

“Hey,” Panther grinned at her with a new joke, “if Hiruma was the Demon King, does that make your kids the Demon Prince and Princess?”

The words were already out of his mouth before he realized mentioning Hiruma might be opening a painful wound. Mamori frowned but to his relief went along with it. “More like the Empress from Hell. I should have named her Nightmare. I swear she was about to murder her own brother!”

Panther laughed out loud. “You know what the best part is? She’s what, 11? She's at her peak. You think she's a lot to handle now? She's still in angel phase. Any minute she's gonna get all those hormones and mood swings and insecurities...”

“And attitude and boyfriends...” Mamori buried her face in her hands in mock distress. “Agh, don't remind me!”

“Ah, becoming a teenager...” Panther mused, leaning further back into the cushions. “I say we should quarantine them until it's safe to let them out.”

“We do, it's called high school.” Mamori reminded him. “But it doesn't spare their families. If only boarding school wasn’t so expensive!” It wasn’t funny but somehow they were both giggling at the cruel joke.

“For real, though, Yume is great,” Panther said as their chuckles died down. “They’re both good kids.”

“I know,” Mamori smiled, “I'm lucky.”

“I don't think luck had much to do with it,” he replied, thinking how he had never seen her properly smile before. She had always seemed pretty enough, the cold and distant kind of pretty that he never thought Hiruma would go for, but this was something else entirely. As he took in her smile he noticed a shimmer building along the edges of her eyes. With a blink it spilled over onto her cheeks. It took a moment to realize what was happening.

“Hey, whoa... what’s going on?” Panther rubbed her shoulder. After all this time he had never seen her smile, but he had never seen her cry, either. “You alright?”

“I keep telling myself he’s not dead.” Mamori stared at the ceiling, struggling to keep the tears from her voice, with little success. “I have to believe that. But it’s so hard...because Zak is right. If he isn’t dead, then why isn’t he home? If he is alive and he’s not here, it must be something really terrible that is keeping him away.” Her voice quivered as a sob pulled at her lungs. “And there is nothing I can do to protect him.”

Panther watched the tears curl along her jaw and drip from her chin, but he did not reply. Instead he put his arms around her.

Mamori sat up straighter, pulling away. “What— what are you doing?”

He loosened his arms. “Just holding someone I care about,” he explained. “Like Zak before. Nothing I could say would help him feel better. Sometimes when someone you care about is sad, all you can do is hold them.”

She looked at him until she couldn’t see him through the thick film of tears steadily welling up in her eyes, and turned her face so he couldn’t watch them fall. Panther shook his head and ran a hand over her hair. “Hey lady, it’s okay to cry.”

Mamori seemed to crumble at the words, letting her face press against his shoulder and the tears soak into his shirt. Tentatively Panther wrapped his arms around her again. When she didn’t resist, he strengthened his grip just tight enough that she could feel that she was not alone.

~*~

Suzuna had tried to avoid questioning Mamori herself directly, mainly because she did not want her to know about the investigation. Sena was right, Mamori would never allow it. But Suzuna also did not want to get Mamori’s hopes up, or ask her to relive the circumstances of Hiruma’s disappearance. Instead, Suzuna worked her way around the usual gang, probing obliquely at those likely to be sensitive to the topic, like Kurita and Musashi, and taking to more direct questioning with others, but had little to show for it. She hadn’t expected Agon to know as much as he had let on, but it had the potential to really push the investigation forward.

If she could get him to spill. It wasn’t going well. On the day of her second appointment she had rung his intercom. He opened the door with smug confidence. “Back for more, I see.”

Despite this welcome, Agon blocked the entrance so she could not pass. “Listen. I don’t want to hear anything about that trash, or my business, or planes, or anything else, got it?”

Suzuna paused a moment, tapping her cheek thoughtfully as if considering the conditions. Then she turned on her heel and began down the hall toward the exit. She had reached the midpoint when she heard him call after her.

“Yo.”

She glanced back. With a jut of his chin he gestured for her to come inside.

“Say whatever you want. I won’t promise to talk, though.”

Suzuna winked. “I will just have to be convincing, I guess.”

But in the end he was true to his word. He didn’t say anything, even after she had told him everything she had learned. He even seemed more interested in a yoga crash course than answering any of her questions. Even though he was not providing the information she knew he had, she had started to think he could be useful in other ways. Sena was still trying to convince her to quit the investigation and had been surprisingly stubborn about refusing to visit the army base. She threatened to go on her own, but he still did not fold. Detective work was not very fun alone. Not to mention she had an uneasy feeling that if she went there alone, she might never come out. It would be better to have someone with her, just in case. As an experiment, she had messaged a meeting place and time to Agon, promising something very fun.

As she waited at the station entrance in a light overcoat, mostly to get in character but also to protect from the rain, she wondered what the odds were that he would show up. You-nii would have known exactly. She couldn’t calculate the odds, but she felt sure he would show—it was only when she thought about it rationally that she started to have doubts. Why would he come? Why would he bother? Agon only cared about Agon, and Agon liked all his comforts and habits. Still, she knew he would come.

She was vindicated and pleased when she spotted him, and even more pleased to see he decided to drive. Having transport and a sidekick were both excellent components of a detective operation. His car was not a cheap model, either. She wondered what Agon actually did for a living, and how much money he had raked in with his supposedly clean dealings with Hiruma and that mystery yakuza operation.

The military base was like an alien planet. The utilitarian buildings looked like bad drawings, and there were so many Americans wearing exactly the same thing. Suzuna was fascinated. They were escorted to the airfield by jeep with a couple of men in uniform and lead to the main hangar. Agon’s blasé air was almost convincing, but Suzuna could tell that behind his shades he was following every piece of equipment with his eyes. He pretended to not watch a team servicing a fighter jet while she spoke to the department administrator.

“The repair log? I guess it’s not restricted, but what do you want that for?”

“I’m just looking for clues. Anything might help,” she explained, and asked for the week of Hiruma’s flight.

“Okay, but do you know anything about aeronautics?” the sergeant said with eyebrows raised, “Do you have any idea what you are looking for?”

Suzuna glared at the pages with determination, unable to make sense of the markings. “The reason You-nii was on a commercial flight instead of flying himself was because the plane he borrows from you was out for repairs.”

“Are you looking for signs of sabotage?” he chuckled.

Suzuna refused to blush with embarrassment and instead scrutinized the pages even more intensely.

“You’ve got guts, coming all the way out here for something you barely understand. But I can tell you right now, sabotage is not the reason Hiruma flew commercial.”

“How do I know you aren’t the one who did it?” Suzuna retorted. “You could be lying to cover your tracks!”

“Well, if it was me, or anyone else here, we would have had a lot of work on our hands, for starters. There’s gotta be twenty fighters on this base that Hiruma can fly. If all of them were out for repairs at the same time, I’m pretty sure someone would have noticed.” He pointed to the dates she had requested and ran his finger down the column to the model numbers. “See, there were five planes out for repair that week, and this one here needs a crew, so he’s not authorized for that, of course. But the others were fine. He could have taken any of them.”

It was almost too much for Agon. “Why is that trash allowed to take military planes anyway? What idiot thinks that is a good idea?”

“He manages to have contractor status, somehow.” The sergeant closed the log and tucked it under his arm. “He seems to go way back with half the officers here and is otherwise persuasive when fresh blood is transferred in. Most of us know better than to ask questions. If you’re his friends I guess you know how it is with him...”

“I’m not his friend.” Agon snapped.

Suzuna shot him a dirty look then turned back to the sergeant. “You’re part of the search for the missing plane too, right? Is there any news?”

“Correct. The Air Force has been involved with the search effort, looking for signs of the wreck in the mountains along the Militaria-Russia-Mongolia border. Still nothing.” He nodded in conclusion. “We are praying for his family.”

There was little else to learn at the base. It was impossible to know if the personnel they encountered were always so taciturn or if they were hiding something. The last time anyone had seen Hiruma was before the new year, with a flight plan to Korea to a town Suzuna recognized from a contract bid Takekura had since won and had just started pouring foundation for. Musashi was away to manage it, only coming back for weekends.

 

On the way home, Suzuna was quiet. Agon noticed.

“A fun surprise, huh?” he referred back to the text she had sent him. “I thought you would be bouncing off the walls after all that.”

She couldn’t muster any enthusiasm. “I don’t get it. I heard Mushasyan tell Mamo-nee that the plane was out for repairs.”

Agon shrugged. “Well, someone lied.”

“I guess. But who?”

“Kukuku! Who do you think?”

Suzuna sat up. “Do you know something!?”

“No, I am just using my brain. If it’s between your boss and that piece of trash you are looking for, who do you think is lying?”

Suzuna didn’t have to think long. “Right.”

Agon’s voice was smug. “So, detective-chan, what do you make of that?”

“It means You-nii chose not to fly solo. He chose to take that plane.” Suzuna said. “Maybe Mamo-nee was right. Maybe he thought flying commercial would protect him.”

Agon chuckled again. “That bastard is not stupid enough to think he would be safe on a SoraAir flight. That’s walking into the lion’s den, if you are on the wrong side of the lion.”

“But why would he do something like that?”

“Beats me. He’s nuts. That’s pretty much public information.” Agon turned at the intersection, hand over hand on the wheel. “Authorized. Incredible... that bloody bastard.”

“Agonne.” Suzuna faced him earnestly. “What were you two doing? Just give me a clue.”

He shot her a glance but kept his attention trained on the road. “Not happening.”

“Come on. I’m going to find out on my own eventually.”

“Good luck. Just leave me out of it.”

Suzuna leaned back against the car door and stared out the window in dismay. Agon raised an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic behavior. “So, wanna grab a bite somewhere?”

“Don’t you care about You-nii at all?” she turned an accusing glare at him.

“Kukuku! Kuku! Kuah ha ha!” Agon clutched the wheel and the car swerved slightly as he buckled under a hearty chortle. “Oh god, don’t make me laugh! We almost had an accident!”

“You were teammates. You were a receiver... you must have been close.”

“If you don’t want to eat out, we could order in. Obviously low blood sugar is making you delusional.”

“Agonne!” She refused to let him change the subject. “You two have been friends since junior high!”

“We have been _using_ each other since junior high,” Agon corrected. “Habits are hard to break, especially when they pay off. It’s not my fault his scheme backfired on him this time.”

She pestered him the rest of the evening, but he was faithful to his promise. Not a word about how he and Hiruma were involved with that yakuza group. Weeks passed, appointments were made, but she couldn’t get him to talk. After Hiruma had been missing for four months, she finally decided to turn to the source she had been avoiding.

 

“Can I help with that?” Suzuna offered politely, thought she knew what the response would be before she even opened her mouth.

“Oh no, no, thank you, Suzuna,” Mamori replied. “It’s just nice having a guest. Please just enjoy your drink.”

For the first time in weeks the weather was nice enough to hang the washing outside, with the patio door open and the sun pouring in. She felt a little guilty, watching Mamori bring in the laundry as Suzuna herself sat, sipping the iced latte that had been graciously offered to her when she dropped by unannounced, but she still intended to ask about Mamori’s defacto-husband, missing-in-action and presumed dead by the weak-hearted.

“Suzuna, dear, you have very good timing,” Mami entered bearing a plate of bite-sized croissants. “Please help yourself.”

“They smell so good!” Suzuna did not bother to decline, even out of politeness. “Ah, they’re still warm! Did you bake these?!”

“Luckily the kids are out at kendo practice, otherwise you might not have gotten a taste before they were gobbled up.” Mami smiled as she settled into her rocking chair with a paperback and a hand-knit blanket.

“Mama, I would prefer if you did not sit there.” Mamori sighed as she placed a folded t-shirt on a stack. Suzuna remembered that after his stroke, Mamori’s grandfather used to sit in that spot, but the medical recliner had been replaced with a curved wooden rocker. It had probably been brought over from America. It might have even been a family heirloom.

“I know you don’t like it, but unless you would rather I sit in the hallway, there isn’t really a better place for it. You can’t deprive an old woman her favourite chair!”

“Don’t say things like that. You aren’t old!”

“I have a grandchild in junior high, I think that qualifies me as old. But let’s not bore your guest with our bickering. Suzuna, how are you?”

They exchanged the usual pleasantries and caught up on the inconsequential stories of mutual friends, and all the while Suzuna waited for the right moment to drop hooks for the information she was fishing for.

“Hey, Mamo-nee... did You-nii ever mention having any projects on the side?”

Mamori looked up from her folding. “On the side?”

“I mean, like, outside of Takekura.”

“Well if you recall, Hiruma isn’t known for mentioning things.”

“Okay, but did you notice anything without him mentioning?”

“He was always very busy,” Mamori replied, reflecting on the question. “It’s anyone's guess what he was working on at any given moment, though. The All Star Camp was a project outside of Takekura, of course... but I guess you are thinking of something else?”

“Something outside the house? Maybe late at night?”

“Well, if I asked Hiruma where he was off to every time he disappeared I would run out of breath.” Mamori scoffed, pulling socks of the drying rack. “Honestly, I only wasted a few years with that approach before I realized it was much more effective to simply tell him when he needed to be home.”

Suzuna felt her last tiny thread of hope slipping through her fingers. “So, you have no idea where he went?”

“What do you want to know, Suzuna? Maybe I could think of something if I had more clues.”

She hesitated. “Did You-nii ever mention Agonne?”

“Agon...ne? You mean Kongo Agon? Oh... so that is what this is about...”

Suzuna’s hopes lifted, but it was an unintentionally cruel deception.

Mamori nodded. “Sena told me he was worried about you.”

Suzuna gulped back her astonishment and its place was quickly filled with fury. “Sena told you about me and Agon!?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. All he said was he was worried, that’s all.”

“What else did he say?” Would Sena have spilled to Mamori about the investigation too?

“Don’t be mad with him. It has been a long time since he’s confided in me, honestly. If he told me it’s probably because he’s really concerned and didn’t know what else to do. You know he is hopeless when it comes to relationships.”

“Understatement of a lifetime.” Suzuna muttered.

“He cares about you.”

“I care about him too. Obviously,” she added pointedly, “since we are still friends, even after everything. I’m still the one inviting him out. I’m still the one making sure he has fun once in awhile. It’s not my problem if he can’t stand the idea I might be interested in other people.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t think that.”

“He took me for granted. I followed him around for years while he made absolutely no effort to be anything but friends. And that’s on me, for wasting so much time thinking he was worth waiting for—”

“Suzuna...” Mamori looked even more sad than usual.

“It’s fine. I’m over it. I’m back. I’m still friends with Sena. And I’m an adult, although apparently no one around here has noticed that. I can take care of myself.”

“Suzuna... It’s not just Sena,” Mamori said. “I’m worried, too.”

“Mamo-nee, you worry about everyone.”

“But this is Agon...”

“I know, I know, he’s bad news or whatever. I know that. I’m keeping it in mind. It’s fine.”

Despite not being presented with a very strong argument, Mamori didn’t seem to be judging her. “As long as you realize he might drop you at any moment. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt... and I don’t think there is anything I could do to make Agon feel remorse.”

The idea of Mamori rising against Agon to defend her hypothetically broken heart pushed the conversation out of the zone of annoyance and into the realm of endearment. “Ya!” Suzuna tackled her friend in a giant hug, sending a handful of towels flying. “If anyone could do it, it would be you, Mamo-nee!”

“Agon-kun...” Mamori seemed lost in thought as Suzuna helped pick up the washing she had dropped, “I haven’t really seen him since college, so maybe he has changed. But back then he seemed to hate everything about himself that was good, and he worked so hard to undo it. I used to wonder if he could ever let himself get close to someone.”

“Not even You-nii?” Suzuna asked mischievously.

“Hmm, maybe. That man has a way of getting under your skin and into your heart while you are busy thinking how much you despise him...”

Suzuna stopped short of pointing out that Mamori had just inadvertently compared herself to Agon of all people—the distant look in the other woman’s eyes told her she had already slipped far away into some memory. One that was more melancholic than sweet, if her expression was any clue.

“Don’t worry, Mamo-nee,” Suzuna tossed a towel at her face in a playful attempt to call her back to the present. “It’s just a fling. It’s kind of fun.”

Mamori replaced the towel to the pile with a perplexed frown. “Fun? Are we both talking about the same person? The guy who only smiles when he’s exacting revenge or bashing skulls?”

“I don’t know how to explain it...” Suzuna smiled to herself as she sorted her feelings into words. “He’s really predictable... It’s a little sad, you know? I feel sorry for him.”

“Pity is not really the best basis for a relationship.” Mamori reminded her. Sage advice from the woman with two children by a sociopath.

“Eh, I said it’s a just fling didn’t I?” Suzuna stirred her latte with the straw and took a sip. “Besides, the sex is really good.”

“Suzuna!!!!” Mamori frantically covered her ears with both hands, and when that did not erase what she had heard she covered her eyes. “My goodness, what about the children!!”

“I thought they were at kendo!” Suzuna replied, then teased her, “Mamo-nee, you have two kids, don’t you know where babies come from?”

Mamori was too flustered to reply. One hand fanned her face while she pretended to be interested in the laundry. “Are you... being safe? Do you need... advice?”

“Yeah, this is not exactly my first time.” Suzuna was afraid Mamori might die of embarrassment and she herself might die of laughter if they did not change the topic soon, but it was far too fun. “Don’t worry, there will be no wedding, no babies, and no sexually transmitted diseases. The sex is not _that_ good.”

“PLEASE EXCUSE ME A MOMENT I’M JUST GOING TO PUT THESE AWAY!” Mamori rushed from the room, arms overflowing with folded laundry.

Mami was chuckling behind her book. “Thank you for that, Suzuna. It has been a while since we laughed in this house.”

“Teeheehee, well technically Mamo-nee wasn’t laughing.”

“True...” Mami shook her head, then turned to Suzuna with a more sober expression. “You are investigating Hiruma’s disappearance, aren’t you?”

Suzuna felt her senses turn on alert, but she began putting pieces together in her mind. Mami lived in that house and she tended to be observant while Mamori was famously oblivious. She would practically be an undercover spy, if she were willing to cooperate. But Suzuna didn’t know how far Mami could be trusted. She nodded cautiously.

“Is there a reason you aren’t telling Mamori?” Mami asked.

“I... well...” Would Mami think it was too dangerous? Suzuna didn’t need to tell her about the yakuza. If it came out later, after she got more information, that wouldn’t hurt anything, Suzuna reasoned. “I just didn’t want to remind her about the disappearance. She seems sad enough.”

“That’s sweet of you. But I don’t think there much you could do to change how she feels.” Mami put down her book and pushed the blanket aside. “It might help your investigation if you saw this.”

Dying of curiosity, Suzuna followed her out of the room to the rear yard. They stopped in front of a shed, or what looked like a shed. Mami shifted through a ring of keys to open the padlock on the door, revealing a trap door on the ground below a few high shelves with gardening tools. The trap door had a more sophisticated lock and Mami produced the key from a secret pocket in her quilted sweater. Behind the trap door was a set of stairs that disappeared underground. Suzuna held her breath. Of course, it was real. Such a thing was not even a surprise. But she did not dare to imagine what it might mean for her investigation.

“Does Mamo-nee know?” Suzuna whispered.

Mami nodded. “She knows. But she doesn’t have the key.”

“But you do...?”

“Well, it’s my house.” Mami smiled. “Mamori goes in from time to time.”

Suzuna had no idea where to start. Hiruma’s secret lair was a perfect disaster, packed to the gills with firearms, football gear, filing cabinets and boxes of electronics. The walls, where the walls were exposed at all, were covered in years worth of junior high football club photos. The desk had no computer, of course, but there was barely even space to set down a laptop among the stacks of magazines and tensor bandages. She filed through the drawers. An assortment of tools. A collection of wires. Random stationary? Suzuna sighed. Where would he keep something useful? A hard drive or camera chip or something like that. She eyed the filing cabinets, hopeful but afraid that the contents would match the organizational methods of the room at large.

“What are you doing?” Mamori stood in the entrance. Suzuna cringed, but Mamori didn’t look angry at all. Her face was nearly expressionless as though some kind of invisible shield was deflecting the reminders of Hiruma from entering her thoughts. Or the opposite. That blank stare might have been the work of being so overwhelmed her emotions had shut down.

“I just... I’m looking for something.” Suzuna tried to sound innocent.

Mamori wandered deeper into the room, trailing her hand over every surface as if she were blind. “About Agon-kun...?”

“...yeah.” Suzuna gulped. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Mamori didn’t respond. Her fingers curled around the handle of a closet door and pulled it open. It was stuffed with costumes of every colour and texture, the top shelf a jumble of hats, a heap of shoes on the ground below. The sight evoked an exasperated sigh from the woman, but she buried her hands in the fabrics tenderly. “When he gets back... that man, I swear...”

Suzuna spied a radio, or something like a radio. It had an antenna receiver and a series of buttons, including one for recording, but no place for a cassette tape. She prodded at it and eventually found a slot for a data chip. It was empty. She tapped each button in turn.

“At first it was so easy to believe he had planned it all,” Mamori said. “For everyone else, it was easy. I couldn’t... I had this memory, I wished so hard it was only a dream, but I couldn’t share their confidence. And then... when he didn’t come back..”

Suzuna held the device up to her ear. From the speaker came the faintest echo of Mamori’s voice. “Mamo-nee, keep talking.”

“I tried to find out what happened. I asked everyone I could think of, I thought someone had to know something.”

Suzuna turned the volume higher. The words came through more clearly.

“No one took me seriously. It was a coincidence, they said. I was in denial, I was just being hysterical in my grief.” Mamori closed the closet door. “Kurita retreated from the world, Musashi barely speaks to me anyway, Sena was too upset to even hear what I was saying, and the rest of them thought that if there was a situation Hiruma couldn’t get himself out of then there was nothing they could do. ‘There is no such thing as an invincible man,’ they said. Those were his words! They dared turn them on me – and in defeat! It’s as if they had forgotten that Hiruma never did anything on his own, he always used the skills of the people around him, he _always had a team!_ ”

Suzuna could only guess at her frustration, remembering how long it had taken to find even the faint clues that she had managed to scrape up. “Mamo-nee... I...”

“Did you know SoraAir has yakuza connections?”

Suzuna’s attention snapped her head back in a whiplash. It was the last thing she expected to hear from Mamori. She had something to show for her detective work after all.

“The people on that plane with him, any one of them might have the motive and the means to hijack it. Any one of them might have been a target for it to be shot it out of the sky,” Mamori shrugged. “Maybe it was just a coincidence after all.”

“No...” Suzuna whispered. She bit her lip to keep from blurting out everything she knew. The military plane. The yakuza. Agon. It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t.

“And anyway, what can I do?” Mamori straightened, brushing some unseen lint from her skirt hem as if readying to face some evaluation of how well she could keep up appearances. “Keep waiting. Keep this family from imploding. Keep on living, somehow. Keep texting him, pretending the messages will reach him wherever he is, out there in the mountains beyond cell towers and phone chargers. Keep hanging onto some stupid hope that I can’t give up on. Praying he is safe, and that he will make it back home... ”

“Mamo-nee...” Suzuna’s heart ached, but she didn’t know what to say. She felt a new determination to solve this mystery, by whatever means necessary. She turned the recorder over in her hands. “Mamo-nee... Can I borrow this?”


	5. Fight

> _Tonight! I am going to the place you two used to go._

Suzuna re-read the message she had sent earlier that day. Her hands felt as if they belonged to someone else. They weren’t shaking but they seemed to buzz. It wasn’t anticipation. She was actually nervous.

> _I wanted you to know, just in case._

She slouched in the back seat and peered out the window at the lowest angle she could manage. Agon had not replied. So much depended on what he would do. He would come. There was no need to be nervous, just pay attention and act quickly.

“I dunno if you could look more suspicious,” Juumonji watched her in the rear view mirror. The air conditioning only half worked, but at least it cut the humidity. He opened the compartment between the front seats and rummaged around the collection of old receipts and techno mix albums. “You want some gum?”

Suzuna shook her head. “Can people see me from outside?”

Juumonji considered the angles for a moment. “Nah, if they can they probably think I’ve got a kid in the back. Just a kidnapper, that’s all. Why am I the one doing this again?”

“Because...” Talking seemed to calm her nerves a bit, but she didn’t want him to know more than he needed to. “I don’t think Agon will recognize you.”

“I’m flattered, if not entirely convinced.” He had stopped dying his hair years ago, but he still had that pesky identifying mark right across his face. “Sure, I know it’s been like ten years since I played against him, but still, what happens if he remembers?”1

“Just act cool.”

“Heh, yes ma’am.”

The door to the apartment complex opened and Suzuna slid as far into the seat as she could manage. “Is it him?” she whispered.

“Yup,” Juumonji pretended not to watch the man through the mirror. “You can calm down, he’s getting into the car.”

Suzuna sighed in relief. If Agon had taken the train she would have had no hope of following him without being spotted. “Don’t follow too close, okay? And don’t lose him!”

Juumoji cracked his knuckles before turning the key in the ignition and shifting out of park. “You know, you never would have asked me to do this if Hiruma was around.”

Suzuna didn’t know how to reply. The statement left her cold, despite the heat. “That... is true...”

“You owe me one.” Juumonji said. “If you were Hiruma, though, you wouldn’t have asked for a favour. You would have convinced me I was avoiding a much worse fate. That way you wouldn’t owe me.”

She clenched her eyes shut. “Can we stop talking about You-nii, please!”

“Hey, we’ve gotta honor his memory. If we don’t talk about him we might forget.”

It was just like Mamori said, they were all giving up on him. Suzuna opened her eyes and watched the street signs pass overhead. “Hey, Monjii, what’s the last thing You-nii said to you?”

“Probably something to the effect of ‘don’t mess this up, fucking brothers.’ A motivational speech, you know. He said that every time, like a broken record.”

The car stopped at a light. From her slouched position she could see the side of Juumoji’s face as he stared straight ahead, then nodded as he would to a respected acquaintance.

“What?” Suzuna grabbed the back of the seat, careful not to be seen. “What happened? Did he see you?”

Juumonji adjusted the air conditioning. “Looks like you were wrong. So now I’m acting cool. What next?”

Suzuna buried her face in her hands. This was bad. “I... Just... What would You-nii do?”

“Heh, what an answer...” Juumonji signaled left and shifted gears as the light changed. Suzuna caught a glimpse of Agon’s car ahead, veering right.

“Hey!” she bolted up, nearly blowing her cover, but ducked behind the seat at the last moment.

“I know, and you’re right. Hiruma would have chased him down full throttle. We’re just going to disappear for a bit.”

“How will we find him?!”

“Lucky for you, I know this area. That road goes straight to the dockyards. It’s nothing but warehouses until it hits the airport. There’s nowhere else he can go,” he assured her. “We’ll do a loop and catch up with him from the other side.

Suzuna watched the other car and the road disappear in the rear-view mirror as they turned again.

“So, do you want to tell me what this is really about?”

“I told you. Hiruma and Agon had some business together. I am trying to find out what it was.”

Juumoji’s reflection glowered at her. “Do you know where we are?”

His stare made her uneasy. “The... dockyards?”

“We shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“But You-nii...!”

“Hiruma would not want you here.” Juumonji replied. “I know I don’t want you here. And it sounds like Agon doesn’t want you here either, or you wouldn’t be secretly following him.”

“I know those two were involved with something dangerous, okay? But this is the key to figuring it all out! Maybe we can find You-nii!”

“Heh... Cheerleaders always have optimism to spare,” Juumonji shook his head in disbelief. “You really think he’s alive?”

“You don’t think he’s alive?” Suzuna shot back. “I’m not going to believe anything different until I have some real proof that he’s not! And even then, it would have to be pretty convincing evidence!”

“God, okay, sure, I’ll bite. Let’s say he’s alive. You really think you can do anything about it, if Hiruma himself couldn’t?”

“We’ve gotta try!” she gripped the upholstery as if holding it tightly enough might change his opinion. “Maybe Hiruma seemed invincible but he always had a team! We can’t give up on him!”

“Heh...” Juumonji rubbed his eyebrow and in that moment she couldn’t see his expression in the mirror. “It’s hard to tell if you are talking sense or nonsense. If Hiruma is alive, and something were to happen to you, what would that mean for me?”

“Just back me up. I’ll owe you. Three parfaits and a lifetime of dog-walking services. If you ever have kids, I’ll watch them too, whenever you want. Also, free yoga classes!”

“Oh god, keep your silly bribes.” He rolled his eyes but couldn’t suppress his grin completely, leaving his mouth in a ridiculous half-smirk. “Just help convince the old man to give me some extra vacation.”

“Ya!! It’s a deal!”

It was almost completely dark by the time they reached the warehouse area along the dockyards, and Juumonji cut the headlights so they would not draw attention. They caught the flash of lights near the loading docks of the building ahead and drifted slowly toward them. The car parked and the familiar silhouette got out.

“Stop here,” Suzuna whispered. Their vehicle was still behind a building, hidden from view. “Wait for me, okay?” She jumped out the back door and crept along the warehouse wall, following Agon’s steps. His movements were brusque and angry. He rounded another corner and Suzuna peered after him. Light and noise spilled from an open doorway, cheers and groans of disappointment. Outside a wiry man stood guard, leaning against a baseball bat and looking bored. Although it was undeniably the thick of summer, he wore a turtleneck, although the long sleeves were pushed back exposing the tattoos that covered him down to his wrists.

“Well well well, what have we here?” The doorman faced Agon as he approached, but Agon did not slow to stop.

“Move, trash.”

“Manners first, my friend,” the man stepped forward to meet him, swinging the bat carelessly. “What could Kongo Agon be doing in a place like this without his infamous manager?”

“I said,” Agon grabbed his wrist with one hand and the top of his skull with the other and slammed him against the metal siding. “Get the fuck out of my way, fucking piece of garbage trash.”

The doorman winced but continued to mock him. “You’ve got a desperate look in your eye. Spent all your winnings already? You’d have to be pretty fucking desperate, to show your face here again. After what Hiruma Youichi did...”

“Don’t mess me up with that bastard.” Agon twisted his arm painfully until the bat clattered to the ground. “Whatever he did, I had nothing to do with it. I was only in it for the money. I didn’t know about anything else.”

“Good to hear,” the man grinned. “But without a manager, who’s going to take your bets?”

Later she would look back and wonder what possessed her, but in the moment Suzuna recognized an opportunity that she couldn’t afford to miss, and she darted out of the shadows before she had time to properly reflect on what she was doing. “I’m his manager now.”

She wasn't dressed like a manager, just an oversized black hoodie and leggings to make sneaking and hiding as simple as possible... but she suspected managers in these parts had a particularly casual dress code.

Agon dropped the doorman and turned toward her, hands still curled, twitching, ready to strangle anyone who came too close. Something curdled in his voice. “You...”

“Oh really?” the man coughed and chuckled as he picked himself off the ground, leaving the bat behind. He swaggered toward her as though he had no idea what he was looking at. “A sweet little girl. Changing your brand, that’s smart, Kongo. You really know how to get doors to open for you after all.” He draped an arm over Suzuna’s shoulders. “Listen, sweetie, beats me why you are mixed up with a walking disaster like him, but here’s a tip. Mind your books and your own business, and we’ll get along just fine. But don’t forget we’ll be watching you very carefully just to make sure you aren’t here to finish what Hiruma Youichi started. If so, we’ll put bets on how long you last in the dog pit.”

“What... did he start?” Suzuna wondered aloud, wide eyed, but the man only grinned like she had given the answer he wanted to hear.

Agon loomed over them, eyes blazing. “Stop chatting up my manager, perverted trash. Go put me on the lineup already.”

The doorman grunted and laughed. “You’re right, I should hurry. So many people want to crush your face into the ground, Kongo. If you had only warned us ahead of time... well, I’m sure the pot will be fat enough as it is! ” As he slipped inside a new round of cheers spilled out the door. Past the thick crowd Suzuna could just spy a monstrous man with taped fists raised in triumph, basking in the light. A fighting ring... She breathed in a sharp breath, suddenly understanding why Agon was working with You-nii.

“Do you want me to die tonight?” Agon asked.

Suzuna turned, shaken by the question. “No! Of course not!”

“Then shut up and listen to me very carefully. If you make one wrong move... do you understand?” He moved close to her, speaking directly into her ear so they could not be overheard. His energy was so intimidating she instinctively stepped back, but he hooked an arm behind her neck so she could not pull away. Suzuna had never seen him like this up close before. She never thought she could feel so afraid.

“You will take this to the bookie,” Agon flashed a wad of bills and pressed them into her hand, “near the back with all the tall, nasty-looking guys. You will check his numbers. You will take what he gives you and give back what he asks of you. If it’s wrong... I don’t even care, just act like a manager and don’t make a scene. You will not explore the area. You will not go anywhere with anyone. You will not ask anyone any questions. If anyone talks to you, you will answer in three words or less. Is that clear?”

Suzuna gulped and nodded but couldn’t find her voice. He released his hold, but he hadn’t finished. “Tell your ride to leave.”

“Wh—?”

“That guy with the scar. He’s from Ta—” Agon stopped himself short with a curse under his breath. “He’s from your work. Right?”

“Y-yeah. But—”

“Tell him you’ll leave with me,” Agon cracked the joints of each of his knuckles as he stared in at the crowd beyond the doorway. “Tell him to tell your boss you won’t be in tomorrow. Or the next day. You have never heard of that place before, got it?”

“What—?”

“You work at the gym I go to. You started last year.”

“Agonn—"

He turned his dangerous glare on her again. “I thought I said shut up and listen. You do not know, you have never known, and you have never even heard of Hiruma Youchi, do you understand? Or we are both going to go missing, and I for one am not interested in that happening. Do you understand me? Don’t fuck this up!”

Once again Suzuna found she was too afraid to speak. There was a movement near the entrance as the doorman returned with a greedy smirk. “Kongo, you’re up. We wouldn’t want to make the guests wait, would we?”

Agon passed through the door without a glance back. After a stunned moment Suzuna followed him in quick, panicked steps. In the shadows, the thick crowd of bodies of all description melded into a single mass that barely parted before them as Agon made directly for the cleared space where she had seen the fighter earlier. There were no ropes to mark it, only the edge of the crowd like a wall.

“Agonne...” she whispered.

“Don’t you have a message to send?” he said, pulling his shirt over his head. The dragon tattoo that that she had always giggled at before, imagining a teen Agon arrogantly marking his superiority into his skin, curled over his back. The black scales gleamed with the terrifying pressure that radiated from him. Her loudest thought was to run, but her legs were locked.

“What about you?” she managed to choke out.

Agon pulled off his Oakleys and suddenly there was nothing to shield her from the killing intent in his eyes as he turned them on her. Her heel slid back as his hand moved toward her. She didn't know what she expected he was about to do, but he slipped the shades over her face. Then he smiled a terrible smile that sent a shiver through her body. “I’ll be just fine.”

~*~

A morning jog was never really just a jog when the people involved had both broken records for speed. It didn’t usually start out as a race, but when one realized the other was keeping up, he felt inspired to push a little faster, and the other could not be outdone. That was how the pair normally ended up running a dozen kilometers before Sena had to leave for work and Panther went to coach the morning practice at Mao. That morning, their pace seemed more human than superhuman. They both seemed distracted.

“Hey Sena... are we runners?”

The question shook Sena away from thinking about the strange message he had received from Juumoji in the middle of the night. He looked at his friend uneasily. “Um... is this a trick question?”

Panther looked thoughtful and a little confused. “Yeah, I don’t know. I thought maybe it would mean something to you. Nevermind.”

“Did someone say you were a runner?” Sena asked.

“Heh, yeah, it was your nee-san actually,” Panther replied. “You were right, she has above-average worrying skills. She seemed to think us two had more in common than being pro-athletes.”

Sena matched Panther’s pace by moving his legs twice as fast as the taller man’s long strides. “That’s... a strange way of worrying, even for Mamorineesan...”

“Do you feel like you are running after something, when you run?” Panther asked, “Or running away?”

Sena thought about all the ways he had run throughout his life. At first, of course, he had been running away. That was well known. Being made into Eyeshield 21 had changed the course of his running and from that point on he always had something ahead of him, some kind of goal. Throughout college football and the pro leagues, there had always been something to run toward. But the feeling of running away had never left him completely. Most of the time he could master it, but sometimes he could feel himself running away without even moving his legs. “Well, both, I guess. Sometimes I feel like we’re running together. How about that?”

“Ha! Yeah, I hear you, but you’re wrong, Sena. You’ll always be chasing me. I’ll always be chasing you. We’re both heading toward something, right?”

“Right...” Sena replied, weakly. When Panther was edging ahead beside him like this it seemed true, but the overall feeling of moving forward had left him for a while. It would be easy to say he had felt that way since he quit the NFL, but the truth was it had started earlier. Panther, though, was still playing pro, still running toward something beyond the horizon, still believing the Earth was round.

“Panther, hasn’t the training season started by now? Are you missing camp, by staying here?” Sena asked. It was already the end of July. He knew when it came to training, Panther was the kind who came early and stayed late.

“Don’t worry about me, Sena,” Panther grinned.

“But what about your contract?”

“It’s fine. I asked for a leave of absence. They’ve got a good roster, they can manage without me for a bit.”

“A leave of absence?” Sena was concerned. “Hey, you know school is out for August, right? You could still get back and only miss a week of training.”

“Nah, those kids need a summer training camp too, if they’re gonna win the fall tournament.” Panther said, as if skipping a pro season to coach junior high was a common occurrence. He must really care about that team, Sena realized, if he was putting his contract on hold for a bunch of kids.

“I could do it,” Sena offered, without really having a plan thought through. “I can take some of my vacation... I think that would be okay. And I could coach for the fall season. You don’t need to stay.”

“I know I don’t need to stay. But... I want to stay.” Panther replied. “I’ve played in the pro leagues, I’ve won and I’ve lost—either way it’s amazing, but when the season is over, then what?”

Sena watched the ground pass under their feet. He knew that feeling better than he wanted to admit.

“I’ve coached kids before, but these are Hiruma’s kids, it’s his team. No one even knows where he is, but this is something I can do for him. I’m needed here... at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Really, it’s more like I need to feel like I’m needed somewhere, and I found it here. They’ll be fine without me back home. With my grandma gone, what do I even have to go back to, you know?”

Panther was smiling as usual, delivering lightly the words that made Sena’s heart sink deeper than he thought possible. Mamorineesan was right. They were both runners. In every sense.

“Why did you leave football, Sena? I always figured it was none of my business, so I get it if you don’t wanna tell me.”

Sena noticed that Panther had slowed. “It’s a stupid reason.”

“I doubt that,” Panther replied.

“Football was my life... It changed everything: how I felt about myself, how I felt about other people... yeah, like you said, even when we lost, it was amazing.”

“But...?”

“But... it was the only thing I understood. Outside of football...” Sena closed his eyes, trusting for the moment that the path would not fall out from under him. “Nothing seemed real. I know it sounds crazy, but my life outside football just seemed... thin. Kind of transparent. And I wanted to be part of the real world.”

“Yeah.” Panther nodded. “But a person can live with a feeling like that for a long time. What pushed you out?”

Sena hesitated. He had tried not to think about it since he came back, but these last few months had stirred up all the things he thought had been settled. Everything was immediate and painful and confusing again, but maybe it would help if Panther listened. “I hurt someone... I really didn’t mean to. I think I loved them, technically, when I think about what love should mean, but I couldn’t... I just couldn’t connect to that person the way they needed me to. Or maybe it was that I couldn’t connect to them in the way I needed... ”

“Because you couldn’t trust them the way you trust the guys you’ve played with?” Panther managed to say what he couldn’t put into words.

“Sometimes it seems like football is the only language I understand.” Sena shook his head in disbelief, but it still felt true. “I don’t think I can actually understand who another person is unless I’ve had to trust them with my life on the field. Is there something wrong with me?”

“If there is something wrong with you, it’s the same thing that’s wrong with me.” For once Panther didn’t grin. “So you left because you wanted to have a normal life?”

“Yeah... like I said, it was stupid.” Sena blinked hard. “Football was really the best.”

“Hey...” Panther put a hand on his shoulder. They had nearly slowed to the pace of a jog “Mamorineesan is wrong about you, Sena. You’re not a runner. You’re trying to face that so-called-real life. You’re brave.”

“...I am?” Sena felt the tension in his chest relax a little and expand with a strange lightness.

“Football is easy— And know you as well as me it’s not, right? But compared with everything else, that real life stuff... Football has rules and a scoreboard and referees and fans, all clearly marked there in their places and easy to figure out. In real life though... I guess there are the same kinds of things, but there’s no rulebook. It’s hard enough just to figure out what’s going on. But the worst part is, it comes to your team, in real life it’s hard to know who they even are. We’re lucky, we’ve already got the guys from football who we’ve tested out and know they’re solid. We know those guys are real, our teammates, and even some of our rivals, because we give everything on the field together. You can’t fake that. In real life, though, that kind of thing is risky. People don’t let their real selves show. And it's even harder for guys like us. Getting famous just makes it harder to tell who is for real.”

Sena breathed a little more easily. Of course Panther knew how he felt. “Did you ever meet someone you knew was real, someone you didn’t play football with?”

“You bet!” Panther turned a blazing smile on him, but after a moment it dropped like a mask. He stared ahead with a distant expression, like a sigh. “Yeah, I met someone real.”

Immediately Sena wished he hadn’t asked, if it meant making Panther’s smile go out. “I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to...”

“It’s not your fault, Sena...” Panther shook his head. A little smile had returned, as though he was laughing at himself. “Actually, I think I’ve got a problem...”

~*~

Suzuna perched on the back of the couch, heart in her throat, watching between the blinds for anything suspicious. Everything and nothing, nothing and everything. A yawn nearly split her skull in two, but tired as she was it was impossible to close her eyes with the paranoia that buzzed in her brain like the cicada outside.

They had made it back to Agon’s place so late that by the time he had showered and taped himself up the sky was bright enough they did not need to turn on the lights. Agon did not speak to her, he barely even looked at her, but he did make an elaborate breakfast that included nearly every food group, and definitely every category of meat, which they ate in silence. His brother had arrived just in time for Agon to leave for work. Wearing a sharp suit with his dreads tied back, Agon ordered her not to go out before he walked out the door. And so her house arrest began.

“Look... I don’t know why Agon is doing this,” Unsui glanced at her over the top of his book after hours of watching her mope. “But I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Unsunyaaan! If you really meant that, you would let me out,” she pouted.

“Agon asked me to watch you, not hold you hostage,” he reminded her. “It might end badly for me, but I’m not going to stop you. The question is, do you really want to go out?”

Suzuna thought about how many faces had been in that warehouse and how many of them had marked her as a person of interest. She thought of how much money those faces had lost as Agon defeated opponent after opponent until there was no one left to fight. She sighed and looked out the window again. She couldn’t stop replaying the night over in her mind.

“He hates me now, doesn’t he?” she muttered.

Unsui looked up from the book again. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I tricked him into a really dangerous situation and caused him a lot of trouble and nearly got us killed and now he’s hiding me from a bunch of scary guys and it’s gotta be a pain for him!”

“That’s one way of looking at it...” Unsui turned a page and continued reading. The line of his mouth seemed a little different than before, not firmly pursed but instead a little crooked. She looked at him suspiciously. In college he had always seemed reasonable and direct. She had never thought of him as cryptic. She wondered if he was feeling ill.

When Agon came home, Suzuna greeted him at the door with a glass of cold tea ready, hoping against hope that if she did everything right he would forgive her. He brushed past her without a word, shutting the door to his room behind him. She retreated to the couch and waited nervously while Unsui pretended to read and the cicadas screamed through the window with their chainsaw songs.

Eventually Agon reemerged wearing one of the tacky casual outfits she was used to and nodded for Unsui to leave. Then he lay back in the recliner chair and stared at the fan on the ceiling. Suzuna had been waiting for hours to ask him all the questions that kept her brain spinning, but her mind went blank when she saw his glare and remembered how many times her heart had stopped the night before. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing. Deep, calm breaths, to keep from running away and hiding.

“I hate summer,” he said.

These were not the words she had expected. She peeked at Agon. He was still staring at the ceiling fan, or past it.

“When I was a kid I always tried to kill every single one of those bastards insects to make that damn racket stop. No matter how many I killed, there were always more, screeching like they were trying to make my ears bleed.” It was tempting to hear a kind of cautionary tale in that, but something told her he was just saying the first thing that came to mind. Agon looked at her for the first time since breakfast. “Turns out, it’s all part of their strategy. There is even a badass term for it: predator satiation. Those bastards pop out so many babies that no matter how many get killed or eaten, there are still some left to lay a trillion eggs and make sure we’re all writhing again next summer.”

Suzuna took another nervous breath. “If anyone could kill them all, it would be you.”

Agon laughed at that. A real laugh, right out loud. The fear that had been constricting her heart for hours suddenly released, and with that relief came a wave of tears.

He frowned. “What’s wrong with your face?”

“I was so afraid...” Suzuna sniffed.

“Yeah? That’s because you aren’t stupid after all.”

“I was so afraid that...” she said again, but couldn’t finish. “...that...”

“I heard you the first time.”

“...that something was going to happen to you!!” She wasn’t really thinking, she must have been too tired to really think it through, but before she realized what was happening she had thrown her arms around him. Agon let out an unimpressed groan, but he let a hand rest on her hair.

“I told you I was going to be fine,” he muttered, “just as long as you did what you were told.”

“I was so afraid...” she told his shirt.

“Hey, we made it out alive. You did good.”

The rare compliment made her glow inside. She glanced up at his face. He was smiling, and not the menacing smile from the night before. She curled against him in the chair and tried not to disrupt the moment. Neither of them had slept in nearly two days. The cicadas sang and the fan spun, and the room rose and fell with his chest.

“Normally you would have asked me forty questions by now,” he said after a time.

“I know,” she whispered. “But I’m afraid.”

“Too afraid to ask questions?” She could practically hear his eyebrows raise. “Kukuku... Maybe I brought home the wrong girl last night...”

She pushed herself up enough to look him in the eyes. “I’m not a girl!”

“I know, I know, calm down.” He patted her head, not entirely convincing her that he did not think of her as a child. “Listen, the fact we made it out last night is good. They think that I was in it for the money and that Hiruma used me as a pawn, and now that he’s out of the picture I have a new manager, simple as that. But if they connect you to that trash bastard... connect is one thing, but you took over his job, at his company! How’s that gonna look to them? So for a couple weeks you are going to stay away from that place, and all the people related to it, just to be safe, and they will forget about everything. And we’re never gonna go back to that warehouse again. Got it?”

She took a breath again, but did not reply. He was not going to be happy.

“What?”

“Agonne...”

“What?”

“I’m going to ask again.”

“I just told you it’s weird when you don’t ask, didn’t I? So ask already!”

“What were you and You-nii doing?”

He stared at her like she had lost her mind. “I thought we just covered that.”

“You mean, how you were in it for the money and You-nii used you and you didn’t know anything?”

“So you’ve been listening...”

“Except you weren’t in it for the money, were you?”

“Huh?”

“What else are you lying about? What else do you know?”

“I’m not—what gives you the right to say I was lying?! I think I know what I know. We made a lot of money. The trash hooked me up, made me an offer, it was good. So I wasn’t lying. It was gambling money, but I earned it. So that makes it clean.”

“This isn’t about whether the money was dirty or clean. Your brother told me. You’re a daytrader. Between salary and bonuses, you make more money than you know what to do with, and yet you live in this trashy apartment.”

“My place is not trashy!”

“Okay, that’s unfair— but you could afford something nicer! You weren’t in it for the money. So why?”

“So what? Money is money. It doesn’t matter if you waste it on rent or invest it in stocks, more money is always better!”

She practically giggled in disbelief. “Agonne! You expect me to buy that? You hate hassle if you can possibly avoid it. Why would you agree to work with a guy who you claim you hate and get mixed up with yakuza just to make more money that you don’t even use?”

“Fine,” Agon scowled. “Maybe I didn’t need the money. What difference does it make?”

“If that is a lie, what about the rest?”

“The rest is true. I was a pawn. I got played. I didn’t know anything. Thank god, or I might be rotting in some wreckage somewhere right now, never to be found.”

Suzuna shot him a disapproving frown then crawled off the chair. He watched as she pulled her bag from under her jacket in a pile beside the couch.

“So, I guess it’s over between us, huh?” he said with a yawn. “Now that you know what you wanted to know so badly...”

Suzuna didn’t reply. Instead she rifled in her bag and took out the recorder.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked, placing it on the low table. Agon stared at it, but said nothing. She tried again. “Have you seen it before?”

“Where did you get that?”

“It was You-nii’s. It’s a radio... recorder... or that’s what I think,” she looked at him again. “Did you ever see him use it?”

“Not use it, but yeah, I saw it. He didn’t want me to see, but he can’t hide everything,” he said. “Is it on there, the stuff he recorded?”

She shook her head.“It was empty when I found it. I just borrowed it because I thought it might be useful to record people when I asked them questions. But... last night...”

Agon narrowed his eyes. “No... You had that on you last night?! You could have gotten us killed!!”

“You said already, we’re fine!” she said. “I didn’t mean to. I just... it was in my bag with my phone. When I went to message Monjii, like you told me to, a light was flashing, one I had never seen before. I thought maybe the battery was dying, but the light was labeled channel 2. So I listened... and when I heard what was coming out of the receiver...”

“...you pressed record, because you are a very intelligent woman. Right?” Agon asked through clenched teeth.

“Right.”

“Do I even want to hear it?”

“Please... just listen.” Suzuna pressed play. The recording began in the middle of a conversation between two men.

> _— ...sure about this? How can you let him back here just like that?_
> 
> _— Don’t forget we are running a business here. We can’t let prejudice cloud our judgment._
> 
> _— Kongo shows up now, you think that’s a coincidence? Obviously he was working with the demon bastard!_
> 
> _— Then we’ll take care of him. Later. Let Kongo fight and we’ll make more tonight than we’ve made in a month. Do you have a problem with that?_
> 
> _— Yeah, I have a problem. Fights are pennies compared to what the buyers are fronting, even after the brokers take their cut. We lost one of our deliverables with the plane already. We can’t afford any more disruptions to that market. We have to deal with this situation quickly._
> 
> _— And you think Kongo sent the ransom note?_
> 
> _— There is no proof Hiruma is alive. Someone could be using his name to get us off the scent._
> 
> _— You may be right. But if Kongo is part of it he’s not working alone._
> 
> _— What makes you say that? Do you know something?_
> 
> _— That’s why I called you here. The situation is worse than you think._
> 
> _— Damn it, how could this get any worse?!_
> 
> _— There’s news from the executives. Someone tracked down the Russian broker._
> 
> _— Fuck..._
> 
> _— Wrapped up like a gift for the cops. The question is if they can make him talk or not. It would be rather bad for business if he talked._
> 
> _— Who was it?_
> 
> _— Well, we know who it wasn’t, at least. Keep an eye on Kongo. You’re right, it might lead to something. Or nothing._
> 
> _— We could question him. Alone... persuasively._
> 
> _— We could. That's up to you._
> 
> _— What, do you have a better plan?_
> 
> _— I do, luckily... A hostage exchange._
> 
> _— I thought the goods had gone through the brokers already. Isn’t that why we’re in this mess to start out with? We can’t exchange something we can’t access._
> 
> _— That is why we’ll get a new hostage. A special hostage. It will be two birds with one stone. We have a buyer waiting for their intercepted goods. But first we need to take care of this interference._
> 
> _— Get our people back._
> 
> _— If they are still alive._
> 
> _— That's what the ransom note says._
> 
> _— That is the premise. And that is enough, all we need is something worth trading to lure him out. It will use all the same skills, but it will be much more difficult. We can’t rush this, timing will be everything._
> 
> _— You really think it’s him, don’t you?_
> 
> _— It’s him or it’s someone close to him. The results will be the same._
> 
> _— Fine, I’ll begin the preparations._
> 
> _— Good. I will send the details as soon as I have them. You are dismissed._

Several minutes of silence followed before the recording stopped. Agon leaned forward, looking at her intently. “I want to hear it again.”

They listened through three more times.

“He’s alive.” Agon said finally.

“Maybe,” Suzuna said cautiously.

“They think he is alive, anyway,” Agon stretched his arms behind his head and leaned back in the chair, trying to look relaxed, but the tightness in his jaw and the way his stare bore into the wall suggested his mind was racing. “Did you see who was talking?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know where it was coming from. It sounds like a quiet place, but in the warehouse you could hear people shouting pretty much anywhere you went. Maybe there is a secret office somewhere in there.”

“That bastard...” Agon muttered. “That was why... He must have planted microphones while I was fighting.”

“That’s the only thing I can think of, but how could they still be there after all this time?”

“He has access to military stuff. Top of the line, it might be really small. Maybe they never found them or they never even realized they’d been bugged.”

“I don’t know what the range is, but I can’t get a signal here. I don’t know how close it has to be...” Suzuna gave him a pleading look. “Agonne... I know you said we can never go back there... but the hostage... We have to do something!”

She waited anxiously for his reply, seriously doubting he would risk putting his life on the line again, but daring to hope that he might agree. Agon stared at the recorder, then back at her. A dark smile crept onto his face, a shadow of the one he had worn before stepping into the ring. “Then I guess you will have to be my manager for a little longer.”

“Yaa!! Agonne!” Suzuna jumped and threw her arms around his neck in a strangling hug that knocked him back into the chair. “You’re the greatest!”

Sunglasses crooked from the impact, Agon smirked. “Ah, there she is...”

~*~

Panther had just about told Sena why he was in trouble. That was close. With these types of things, it was better to pretend it didn't exist. Saying it out loud was just a bad idea. Say it out loud and suddenly it's real, and then there's no way to ignore it. Better to just ignore it until it goes away.

But he wasn't, really. If he was ignoring it, he wouldn't keep imagining that this trip to the immigration counter was a date. It was obviously not a date. Paperwork was not a date. Except paperwork didn't usually involve standing beside the person who looked at him that way, past his jokes into some part of him other people didn't seem to notice. Someone whose breath he had felt on his neck. Who called him by his name...

That last one wasn't supposed to matter. He had pretty much forgotten that those sounds in that order even referred to him. It was usually only teachers who had insisted on calling him by his given name and it was a reminder of how many worlds stood between them, if they couldn't bring themselves to call him the name that was good enough for his friends and cousins and coaches. When he was younger, calling him Patrick Spencer had been drawing a line in the sand. But it had been so long since anyone insisted, he felt different about it now. It had grown on him, maybe because she was the only one who used it. It was just sweet to hear for some reason, when she was the one saying it.

"I'm sorry for all this trouble," Mamori was saying. He was starting to think she was under a curse or something that required her to apologize for stuff that wasn't her fault. Maybe if she didn't she'd get turned to stone.

"Hey, no worries. I'm not the one who came straight from work," he replied. "You didn't have to come, though. Pretty sure I would've gotten it all filled in right after enough trying. But thanks for coming. You probably saved the girl at the counter a couple hours of frustration."

"I couldn't let you face them alone. And one of the benefits of kindergartens finishing so early is being able to run errands before the business day ends. It's quite practical," Mamori said. Then she sighed, "But I don't know what I'll do if they need another form! Or more documents! It's not like you're applying for citizenship."

"Well," Panther stretched his arms above his head. Bureaucracy could not be rushed, there was no point worrying about it. "Hopefully that's the last of it."

Mamori checked her watch. "So, Patrick Spencer, do you have plans before practice? There’s a bit of time still."

"Oh, you know, I have a little project going on," he said playfully, but inside he was trying to calm his runaway pulse. She was just asking his plans. She was not trying to ask him out. Don't get carried away. "I'm trying to find the best pizza in Kanto."

"The... you're what?!" she let out a rare, unexpected laugh. Her face was covered in a confused smile and his heart nearly imploded.

"You heard me," he grinned.

"Yes..." she gave him a quizzical look, "But... why...?"

He could only shrug. "It's a good excuse to go different places and explore, meet new people and stuff. Plus pizza tastes different at every place. So it's always a special experience. Japanese pizza can go so many directions. It's a total surprise every time."

"Pizza?" She was still smiling, shaking her head in disbelief.

"When I find the best place in Tokyo, I'll take you there." After all, friends eat pizza together all the time, he reasoned.

"How will you know? Will you go to every single place?" she smiled, drawing the joke out a little longer. "We might need to ask for a longer visitor visa."

"I'll just know..." They were still talking about pizza, but pizza never usually made him feel so light. There were definitely birds singing in the treetops. It seemed like they were passing an abundance of treetops. It was not just his lovestruck hallucination, either.

"If you are going to the train then let's go this way," Mamori steered him off the sidewalk toward a lush opening between the buildings. "It's much nicer."

A few months ago he would have been surprised to find a long park tucked behind a tiny entrance like this in the middle of the city. It was quiet and slightly less sweltering hot than walking amid all that concrete, but no less humid. It was a proper Japanese landscaping job, too, with all the plants necessary to ensure that there was always at least one flower in bloom regardless of the season. When he had first come to this country, he had been kindly informed time and time again that there were four seasons in Japan. But he was wiser now. He knew there was a new season every three weeks, on average, with its own flowers and seasonal foods and cute motifs that the shops exploited enthusiastically. It was currently the damn hot and sticky season of giant towering clouds, but he didn't know which flowers were on feature. Local advertising suggested sunflowers, but there were no sunflowers in the park.

"I still haven't thanked you, really properly," Mamori said after they had been walking a bit, "The puzzle was a brilliant idea. I wasn't sure if those two were ever going to speak to each other again, but by the end of the week they were even working together."

"Well, ten thousand pieces of Where's Waldo, at some point you gotta use teamwork," he said.

"I never would have thought of that. Kindergarten kids would just eat the pieces." She seemed to be searching for an explanation, but hesitated before asking as if reluctant to pry. "Do you... have children?"

"Nah, well... Not that I know of, anyway," he laughed. "Figured someone would at least accuse me, seeing as I can actually afford child support, but it seems like no."

"But you are so good with kids..."

"Well, I did youth teams back home, too. Same age as your kids, and some older. But I dunno if I could handle the younger kind, not if they eat puzzle pieces. No puzzles, no football... What would I have left to work with?"

She laughed at that. After a thoughtful moment she added, "You would be a good father."

He had always thought being a role model or a coach was better than being a father. He didn't really know what a father was supposed to do, even though he had a good long list in mind of what they shouldn't do. But from her, that quiet, factual statement was more than a compliment. It conjured up visions of alternate futures, and momentarily stopped his heart and lungs.

"I'm grateful to you, you know, for everything you've done. For the kids. And the club. And ..." Her phrase faded away in a breath.

"Hey, you're gonna get through this." Panther reminded her. With anyone else, he would have clamped a hand on their shoulder to reassure them, but he was afraid to tempt fate any more than he already had.

"Somehow... I don't know how, but we don't have any other choice." She nodded slowly, then straightened her stance. "What I mean to say is, thank you. Really. We are very lucky to have received so much of your time. It doesn't seem fair to whoever is waiting for you back home, but we are thankful. I'm thankful."

"What makes you think there is anyone waiting for me?" he asked, teasing because everything was better when it was a joke, but beneath it he wanted to know the answer. She had never asked about his personal life. Where did it come from suddenly, an assumption like that, that someone was waiting for him?

"Because," Mamori met his eyes, explaining kindly and carefully as though revealing a secret that was obvious to everyone but him, "you take care of people."

When she looked at him like that, those warm eyes, it felt like he was being enveloped in her heart. He let the connection of that gaze flood his veins with its potion. The longer it lasted the more real it felt— real as in less and less like a one-sided fantasy, and more like something they shared that was beautiful and deep and true. But that beautiful feeling only lasted until a kind of poison crept up from the deep parts of his gut, and he remembered that very same beautiful thing meant wishing one of his closest friends dead.

"So, Mamori Anezaki," he made his voice in a sing-song to change the subject, forcing his eyes to watch a tall grey egret as it plucked a path in the water channel that the park was built along. "What do you usually do after work, when you aren't helping fools check boxes on stacks of paper?"

Mamori gazed at the bird, too, taking in the scene as though it were a painting in a fine gallery. "Well, now that Zak is in school I have a little more free time. I usually go to the orphanage, if I can. I've been trying to go more often, ever since..." Her voice fell again. It was hard to believe he had gotten her to smile only a few minutes earlier. "And now I try to check on Kurita, too. Although I'm not sure if he needs me. Sometimes I think he helps me more than I help him."

Panther had never imagined that the kindhearted boy he had gotten drunk with as a teenager had been Hiruma's closest friend, but he didn't know Kurita well enough to comment. "It's so strange, that you have orphanages here. It's like something from an old movie. In the States, orphan kids mostly stay in foster homes, I think," Panther said. "What do you do there?"

"I usually help with the babies or play with the younger kids until the older ones get back from school. Today I'm tutoring some of the junior high kids in English and helping them with their homework. Most of them are so behind I don’t know if they will ever catch up, but I think they have been getting stronger than when I first started, at least a little."

"Man, those kids are lucky," Panther said watching the egret flap and then glide off just above the surface of the water.

Mamori stared at him, her expression blank at first before it transformed into a confused, outraged sadness that seemed to block her ability to speak.

“They have no parents!" she said finally.

"I mean, no, of course they're not lucky..." He could really be a complete idiot sometimes. "I just meant, you know, it must make them happy, that you spend time with them."

"It doesn't matter how many times I visit. That won't make up for it." she said, "How are they going to grow up properly, without someone whose purpose is to love them? How can they ever—" Suddenly she looked at him like she had only just seen him and stopped, ashamed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't pretend to know what it's like."

"I don't really know what that's like, though," Panther shook his head. "I wasn't an orphan. I didn't have parents, but I still had someone. If I turned out alright it's probably like you said, because I had someone who was busy making sure I knew someone loved me through thick or thin."

He finished with a grin, but it was only out of habit. The person who had loved him through thick and thin was gone. That feeling that he had gotten used to crept up on him again: a prickling behind his eyes and soreness in his throat. As usual he tried to push it away, but this time he found it was harder to control. His long, casual strides must have slowed or shortened, because Mamori turned toward him then, just as he was staring at the sky and blinking hard. She led him by the hand to a bench nearby, blocked from view of the rest of the park by an azalea bush and sat beside him as he continued to try recompose his face. The air was thick with the whirrs of cicada but somehow the park seemed quiet.

"What was she like, your grandmother?" Mamori asked softly.

“She was... the best.” It felt strange that Mamori did not know the most important person in his life. “She was always laughing, even when she was mad about something. And she never backed down. She was always ready, always finding a way to make something out of nothing so I could have whatever I needed... she knew the difference between what I needed and what I thought I needed, of course.” he added with a chuckle. “Fearless. Reliable... something like that.”

His speech at her funeral had been short and awkward. It didn't feel like enough. He didn't know how to do justice to her. He stuffed his hand in his pocket to reach for the headband she had made him, all those years ago, when making it big was only a dream. It was too old and had been through too much to be worn as he had done in high school, but he carried it with him as a token or a charm.

“We moved a lot,” he said, running his fingertips over the stitching, “I can’t even count how many places we lived in, but mostly they were all within the same five blocks. Sometimes we were on our own with next to nothing, sometimes we lived with a bunch of aunties and cousins all crammed in a couple rooms. But it didn’t matter. Wherever she was, that was home. She was home.” Speaking a truth he had been trying to ignore pulled at his insides. His lungs drew in a breath that was too sharp, too much like a sob. “Now she is gone, so... now there is no place to go home to.”

He felt the warmth of Mamori's hand on his shoulder. Even if all day the thought of her touch had made him feel like he had a school crush, in that moment he just felt grateful to have someone listening. The tears that had been so important to hold back before began to creep down his cheeks. Still, he covered his eyes with his hands, his headband clenched in his fists.

Beside him, Mamori nodded. “You live like she taught you.” she reflected. “That's where you get it from, taking care of people like you do, isn't it?”

He had not thought of it in quite those terms, but nodded in reply with a half-grin and a sniffle. “Yeah, she raised me proper.”

“I'm thankful to her.”

“She's gone now,” he said, more to himself than to her. He couldn't run from it anymore. “I'll never see her again. I'll never be home again. That's just how it goes...” It wasn't fair, but he didn't say that. That was what a kid would say. A sob built up in his lungs again, pushed out by the months-worth of tears that he had been hiding away. Once they began they were uncontrollable, no matter how hard he tried to keep them quiet, and didn't seem like they would ever run out.

At first Mamori stroked his hair as she had when her own son had been overcome by sobs. When that did not seem to help, she extended her arm along his back and drew the other across his chest. Like this, holding him, her voice fell warm and close. "You keep her memory alive in your heart. She is still alive in you, isn't she?”

Panther nodded but the tears only fell harder.

“So, maybe it's not true, after all... That you have no home anymore. If she is alive in you, that means anywhere you go, you are already home,” she reasoned gently, with a kind, patient smile. The suggestion caught in his thoughts like a snag in the gears of a runaway machine. He glanced at her, unsure if believing her would be betraying his grandmother's memory. Mamori met his eyes, and he felt that glimmering warm, beautiful feeling burn through the tears that had taken over his body. Soon he felt like he might be able to control his voice.

“Does that mean...” he was afraid to say it out loud, and tried to make it sound like an offhanded remark, “...that I could be home here?”

“Here...” She looked around as if the place itself held the answer. The usual sadness returned to her eyes. “If you could be home here, that would come from inside you. But you need to understand, you will never be more than a guest in this country. Even if you got all the right papers, people here would always see you as an outsider. ”

“It's better than where I came from, though. I’m not going to get killed for no reason, right? Even if I've got every right to be there, it seems like every day there is a new reminder that my people aren't welcome.”

“You would rather live as a guest in an adopted country than be rejected in the one you grew up in?”

“We’re talking about deadly forms of rejection. Not just getting the cold shoulder. That's the trade-off,” Panther reminded her. “I can handle it.”

“I see,” Mamori replied, gazing thoughtfully across the park. After a moment she said softly, as if to not be overheard by the dead. “I wonder what your grandmother would think about that...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1// I don't believe Juumonji went to Saikyoudai, even though it totally makes sense for the whole "breaking up of friends" theme of the last volume. You can fight me on this, or imagine it as my personal AU where Juumonji joins Takekura :P


	6. Matsuri

Suzuna glanced nervously around the crowd, holding her sleeves up as Mamori crouched beside her, tugging at the fabric below her obi to straighten the fold. All around them girls passed by, wearing flowery yukata in light, sweet colors, but Suzuna’s was plain, wide stripes of indigo. She had learned to dress in styles that were a little more mature than what her heart yearned for if she did not want to be mistaken for a child. Simple hair clips— nothing too cute— classic accessories... it was strategic but stiflingly boring. Mamori’s yukata was also a deep blue, barely disrupted by a subdued pattern of bamboo leaves, but she was a mom and practically married. Yume, on the other hand, was young enough to be dressed in butterflies from head to toe, but she had forgone yukata altogether in favor of the loose jacket of a jinbei, her legs sprouting from the light cotton shorts dotted with dragonflies. Perched on her shoulders, her brother reached for an alluring insect on the tree branch overhead wearing a similar outfit. Blues and greys and blacks... The group of them did not make for a very festive palette.

“There, now, all better,” Mamori patted down the fold to make sure it was smooth before stepping back to check her silhouette. “Really Suzuna, you didn’t need to dress on your own. You should have come over and left together with us.”

“Well, I’m not a kid anymore,” Suzuna nipped at her lip nervously, checking again for suspicious faces watching from the crowd. She had assumed that among the thousands of people attending the festival that she could have easily avoided the family of the man she was not supposed to know anything about, but instead had somehow managed to run into them almost immediately. “I thought I could do it myself.”

Mamori finished her appraisal with an approving nod. “You did a good job. Your hem was mostly straight. And the obi looks amazing. Did you get that fabric on your trip?”

“Ya! I carried it all the way back from Chennai! I guess I could have just mailed it home anyway, but it’s light so I barely noticed.” The shimmering orange, pink and gold of the sari fabric tied in a flouncy bow behind her was the one concession she made to herself in her ensemble. Bright and bold, it was a reminder to the world that even though she was not a kid, she was not an old granny either– she was alive and modern and ready for the next adventure at any moment.

“You look really lovely, Suzuna,” Mamori said, her eyes catching every detail. She reached behind her to center the seam on her collar one last time. “Could it be that... you are here for a date?”

“As a matter of fact...” Suzuna grinned at the caution in her friend’s voice, but her answer broke off as she spied two figures approaching. “Oh! Whoa, Panther-kun, hellooo...!”

Sena and Panther were also dressed in yukata, which she could only assume Sena’s mother had some hand in. Sena looked even shorter than usual beside the tall American and seemed uncomfortable at all the eyes that turned toward them when Suzuna called out. But there was no need for Sena to feel awkward, as no one was looking at him.

“Haha! You like my new look?” Panther took a confident step and held out a sleeve to model his pale striped yukata. The angle of the collar accented the long diagonal from his shoulder to the band tied around his hips. It was quite flattering indeed.

Mamori had scarcely blinked since he arrived. “You look very nice, Patrick Spencer. It suits you,” she said in a mild voice.

“Very nice?!” Suzuna exclaimed. “Panther-kun, don’t listen to her! You look smoking hot!”

Panther grinned. “Well it’s hard to know if I should believe that, since Japanese people are legally required to say nice things.” Even though he was laughing at Suzuna’s remark, he looked only at Mamori.

“That’s true, but Japanese people are also not supposed to lie,” Mamori replied. There was something about the way she looked at him that made Suzuna feel awash in a memory. She glanced at Sena to see if he had also noticed the thing she had not seen in ages. Mamori was smiling.

“Alright, alright, but by now I know one thing at least: it’s sure okay for Japanese people to stare!” Panther said wistfully, pretending to be annoyed. To everyone except Mamori it was obvious he was teasing, but Mamori looked away, flustered and embarrassed, suddenly aware that she had been staring. Suzuna covered her own mischievous grin with a hand to keep from looking too obvious.

“Panther!!!!! Yaaaa!!!” Finally disentangled from their tree-boost-insect-pursuit configuration, Yume and Zak came running and jumped at him, hanging off his arms. Almost immediately they began dragging him away with all their strength. “Let’s go!!! Come on!! We’re gonna show you everything!”

Panther looked back at the adults, a little helpless but mostly amused. The others followed at a short distance, but the children and their hostage quickly disappeared in the crush of the crowd in the direction of the procession of traditional dances further ahead.

“Suzuna, hey...” Sena cleared his throat. “It’s been a while... Are you doing okay?”

“Yaa! I’m totally fine!” she chirped, perhaps too enthusiastically. Sena did not look like his fears had been allayed. He glanced at Mamori, a few paces ahead, and slowed a little more.

“Are you sure? You haven’t been around... They miss you at Takekura... Suzuna... you know you can tell me... I know I wasn’t...”

“No, no, Sena, don’t worry,” she smiled. “I’m fine, really. Thanks for worrying about me.”

“I just...” He stopped, but the crowd kept streaming around them. “Suzuna. I’m sorry.”

Suzuna tilted her head. “What for?”

“For a lot of things. I’m sorry I left you to the detective thing alone. I thought... I hoped that if I wasn’t there you would stop. I know it’s selfish of me but... After what happened to Hiruma... I was really afraid of losing you, too. I don’t know if I could handle that.”

Suzuna watched Sena choke out the words, her eyes wide with wonder. He was really terrible at talking about how he felt. “Sena...”

“But you didn’t stop. Because you are really amazing and brave. And now I’m afraid that I just made things worse by leaving you on your own. So, if I can help... just let me know. I won’t let you down.”

He looked at her with the eyes she thought she had been in love with once, when she was young and foolish and didn’t know better. The way he could look so determined to do something that he was singularly afraid of had always melted her insides, but it had been a long time since she had realized that the feeling would never be returned and had gradually warped into something bitter. This time, for some reason, she just felt warm.

“Thanks, Sena,” she nodded to him respectfully, thinking how she just might have shed a tear if they hadn’t been in such a public place. “Well... I’ve gotta go meet someone. See you around...”

“It’s Agon, isn’t it?” he asked before she broke away. She didn’t deny it, and he seemed to read her silence. “I hope he understands... properly...” Sena trailed off, staring at the ground like it might hold the rest of his sentence.

That boy was hopeless, Suzuna thought with a sigh. She couldn’t leave him alone in such a state. “Hey!” she grinned and pushed his back to move him forward. “You’re at a festival. Be a bit festive! Get some takoyaki! And tease the bejeezus out of Mamo-nee for me, because that woman is dead goooone!”

Sena staggered forward and was soon swept up in the general movement of strangers through the street. Suzuna waved after him cheerfully until he was out of sight.

~*~

“Sena!? Sena!!!”

It was Mamori, calling as she would if Yume or Zak were lost. “Oh! Thank goodness, there you are! Don’t get separated like that!” The relief on her face when she spotted him struck him so sharply he did not resist when she grabbed his wrist.

“Mamorineesan... you do remember I’m a grown adult, right?” Sena couldn’t help but smile a little, even though he was still stunned from his conversation with Suzuna. He hoped she had not gotten the wrong idea.

Mamori released her grip on his wrist immediately. “Yes. Sena. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“What about the kids?” Sena asked. “Have you spotted them yet?”

“They’re just up ahead, near the dancers,” Mamori gestured to the street where a parade of dancers in straw hats and colorful jackets moved in unison. From what he could tell, the kids were teaching Panther the dance. Suzuna was right, after all: it was a festival.

“Are they getting along okay?” Sena asked. “No more murder attempts?”

“Incredibly, thankfully, no.” Mamori seemed distressed at the memory and relieved it was in the past. “They didn’t speak for a full week. I think now they realize they have to be strong, for each other’s sake. Well, Zak understands that. Yume, though...”

“Yu-chan doesn’t know the first thing about giving up hope.”

Mamori nodded, watching the dance with tired eyes. “She won’t give up hope, but I don’t know what we are going to do if it is taken from her...”

Sena wondered what would happen once they found proof that Hiruma was dead. He felt both a little ill and unmoved, and both of those feelings created a war inside him. Did he already believe in his heart Hiruma was dead? That didn’t feel true, but he also could not say he believed he was alive. If that were true, where was he? Instead, Sena lived in a universe where Hiruma moved between worlds, alive and dead all at once, and he could believe in both without betraying anyone. It was a numb, sinking feeling, like peacefully drowning in a sea with no sharks.

“Mama-mori!!” Zak and Yume burst back through the crowd, with Panther not far behind. “Watch us dance! We taught Panther the ō-dori!”

“Hey, don’t forget our deal, right?” Panther winked at them.

Sena and Mamori watched and clapped as the trio moved through the dance, the children calling out the steps to the tune, and Panther laughing as he messed up the sequence. After a perfect run of it they took a bow and Panther announced they would next do the traditional dance of America.

“This honored tradition is called the Chicken Dance,” he said with a faux-straight face as the children burst into laughter behind him, shaping their hands into little beaks. They proceeded to flap their wings and shake their tail feathers, then fly in an awkward circle while singing the elegant lyrics: “Nana-nana-nana-nah! Nana-nana-nana-nah! Nana-nana-nana-nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah!”

To judge from the children’s reaction, this was truly the most hilarious thing that had happened in ages, and it was a wonder they could stand let alone dance through their laughter. Sena snuck a peak at Mamori. She was beaming as she clapped along.

“Hey, I think your mama wants to dance,” Panther whispered loudly to Zak and Yume. Mischief lit up their eyes and they grabbed her by the sleeves.

“No no no thank you!” she protested, laughing as they dragged her into the circle. “I can’t, it’s too silly!”

“You can, it’s very easy and maybe even a little fun. Besides, Mamorineesan will be the swan of the chicken dance. Right, Sena?”

Sena nodded enthusiastically with a petrified smile, wishing Panther had not turned the attention on him.

“Uncle Sena, you too!!!” _A thousand curses on you, sir!_

The traditional dance of America was rather fun, it turned out, but it was not long before Mamori made up an excuse about needing to find a place to watch the fireworks before all the good spots were taken. Zak and Yume dragged Panther off again, this time to the booths with the games and the food.

Mamori was still smiling when they parted. “I hope they don’t abuse his kindness too much.”

“At least you gave them some spending money so they don’t abuse his wallet...” Sena noted.

“Honestly, this family owes him so much... we could never make it up to him.”

“That’s not why he is doing this.”

“I know,” she conceded. “He has an incredible heart.”

Sena watched her face, still having trouble believing what he was seeing, but Suzuna had noticed it too. “He makes you smile.”

Mamori’s eyes widened and she looked away quickly, as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“That’s a good thing!” Sena insisted. “Mamorineesan, I don’t even remember the last time I saw you smile, and somehow Panther is able to make you laugh! I’m glad. I want you to be happy...”

Mamori said nothing as she searched for a spot along the side of the river. She had been right, the embankment was packed with the mats and blankets of families and couples and groups of friends. When she spied a gap between two groups she moved quickly, excusing herself to the neighbors and shaking her own mat open. Sena helped weigh down the corners, hesitating before he found the courage to speak again. “Hiruma would want you to be happy, too.”

She gave him the stern look of a parent and teacher who knew best. “I think none of us have any idea what Hiruma would want, Sena.”

“No, I’m pretty sure,” Sena stood firm. “When it came to you, the only thing that mattered to him was that you were happy. I’m sorry if that seems hard for you, and unfair, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able handle it if it were me. But if you have a way to be happy, Hiruma would want that for you. Panther makes you happy. You shouldn’t be afraid of that.”

“And when Hiruma comes back?” Mamori replied. “What then, Sena? Please. Think about what you are saying. Because I assure you, I have spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

“And what if Hiruma is dead?” It hurt to say it, but he was tired of pretending.

“Sena!”

“How long are you going to wait for him? Are you just going to spend the rest of your life half empty? I don’t want that. I want you to be happy. I need you to be happy, Mamorineesan, because I want to believe that someday I can be happy againy, too.”

The confrontation in her eyes melted away. “Oh, Sena...” Before he realized what was happening she had put her arms around his shoulders and was holding him close.

“Mamo-nee...! what are you...? There are all these people...!”

“I’m just holding someone I care about,” Mamori said. At first he was self conscious with the public display, but it felt nice to be held. All the contradictions he felt seemed less dangerous with someone’s arms there keeping him safe.

“I don’t know where he is, if he is alive or dead,” Mamori told him. “There is nothing I can do... but I can hold a space in my heart for Hiruma. Maybe that space will hold something other than sadness someday. For now it is a gaping hole that I am afraid to even fill with memories, because I need to save room for when he comes back. Do you understand that?”

Sena nodded, his forehead firmly against her shoulder. If he thought of the cavern in his heart as a space he had set aside, would it be any easier? “Are we always going to feel empty like this?”

“At least until we know what happened to him,” she replied softly, like a footnote that wasn’t meant to be read.

All the feelings he had been pushing back for so long came rushing up at once, flooding his eyes that were safely hidden from view by Mamori’s sleeves. “It hurts...”

Mamori tightened her arms around him again and stroked his hair patiently. “I know...”

Eventually his breathing calmed and he dried his face with his own handkerchief that he still inexplicably needed her to put in his hands. “I’m sorry, Mamorineesan... You shouldn’t have to deal with me... I should be the one supporting you. Are you going to be okay?”

Mamori looked out across the river. The earliest stars had come out but they were too pale to reflect on the water with the light of the city all around. “I wonder if I made the right decision, coming here tonight.”

“To the festival...?” Sena said. “I think it’s what he would want, he would want you to enjoy life.”

“It’s the Obon festival, when the dead visit the living... is that bad luck?” This was a superstitious side of her that he had never seen before. “But I couldn’t risk not coming. What if he comes and I’m not here? So I came. It’s just a festival, I told myself. All I have to do is watch fireworks explode without crying.”

 

~*~

 

Even in the early evening dusk it was still so hot that the swirl of ice cream was already starting to lose its shape, which meant it was only a matter of time before it started dripping past the lip of the cone. Suzuna dashed as quickly as she could to the place near the bridge where they had planned to meet. She could see Agon leaning against the wooden railing, checking his phone as he waited.

She skidded to a halt in front of him and held out the ice cream with a pleased smile. Agon looked at it as though she had held up a blank piece of paper.

“Here! It’s for you!” she nudged it closer to him, although she thought it was pretty clear that the cone in her other hand was her own.

“What’s this?”

“Pineapple soft serve!”

He made a sound in his throat, which she had come to think of as the unamused Agon grumble. “Please tell me you did not call me out here just for this.”

“I thought you said you’d try anything once!”

“No, you are the one who said that, not me.”

She licked her own ice cream enough to keep it from dripping, but thin trails of cream were already starting to run down her hand from the cone she held out to him. “Come on, it’s melting! Agon _ne_! Hurry!”

He gave her his typical hard stare of unmoved resistance, but it was ultimately no match against her expectant look. Then, finally, whatever his reservation had been cracked and the ice cream disappeared in two bites, leaving only the empty cone in her hand. Immediately he buckled with a pained groan and a palm against his forehead. “Ahhgggh!”

“Oh! Oh no, brain freeze?! Why did you eat it so fast, silly?” Suzuna hovered around him with concern, but there was little she could do except lick the melted cream off her hand.

“Gahh...” he cracked his neck and tried to settle back in his cool-guy posture. “Okay, are you happy now?”

“Mhmm!” She was still patiently working on her own ice cream, perhaps even more cautiously having observed his pain. “Did you like it?”

“Does it matter if I liked it? Why did you want to meet here? Aren’t we going to the warehouse?”

Agon had entered the fighting ring three weekends in a row. Each night they walked away with their cut of the wagers and a data chip filled with recordings. Some nights very little of interest was discussed in whatever room the microphone was planted, but they were starting to piece together an idea of what the criminal network was dealing in. If she had any doubts before, it had become certain that this wasn’t a game. It was terribly serious, but it wasn’t right to be so serious all the time.

“I thought you deserved a change of pace!” Suzuna told him. When he frowned at that she poked his shoulder playfully. “You know, to do something fun instead of risking your life and stressful things like that.”

“Something fun, huh?” Agon looked around skeptically.

“Come on, even you have to think festivals are fun!”

“Eh... Festivals are only good for picking up girls,” he muttered.

“Step one complete!” Suzuna grinned at him. She finished off the last bit of cone and brushed the crumbs from her hands. “So, what do you wanna do?”

“For fun? Here?”

“Yeah! There will be fireworks in a bit. Do you want to find a place?”

He seemed to agree with that, from the way he started walking off toward the path along the river, on the opposite side from the main festivities. Suzuna sighed and followed with a smile. Walking together was nice, although she knew he would never admit it.

“So, detective-chan, did you ever figure out why I did it?”

She perked up at the question. Agon was being mysterious! It was new and exciting. “Why you did what? Why you worked with You-nii?”

“Yeah.”

It had been a while since she had thought about that. “Not for the money... hmm. Did You-nii have some blackmail on you? Oooo what did you do?! Are you gonna let me in on it? Is it going to come back to haunt you?”

“Very clever... if thinking of the obvious reason is clever, I guess...” Agon smirked. “That’s not why.”

“Hmm. Not blackmail...?” Suzuna tapped a finger against her chin thoughtfully. “Are you saying he didn’t force you?”

“Nah. I was willing. I pretended it was for the money, but that was just an excuse. The real reason was...” he glanced at her with an expectant look, giving her a chance to guess. When she waited silently for the reply he answered himself, “...I was bored.”

Suzuna felt a tiny smile creep on her face. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought that Agon was volunteering his feelings to her.

“I thought those other dumbasses were such idiots for going pro. Too much hassle, too much work, that’s what I told myself. But I didn’t think how damn boring it would be, life without football. I still worked out, still fooled around with women, distracted myself by working my way up the corporate ladder. But it’s not the same as destroying a whole team of guys who think they are the shit. So when that trash showed up again, with a scheme up his sleeve...”

“Tee hee hee...” Suzuna knew where that story ended.

“I’m still faster than the big guys, smarter and stronger than the small ones. Well, you’ve seen it. I always find a way to come out on top. They think they have a hope of beating me, they hate me so much for wasting them, they try again... And damn it, it’s fun.”

It was heartwarming to hear such a thing from the guy whose emotional range seemed limited to growls and smirks. Still, something was not lining up with her memory. “But isn’t it dangerous?”

“Sure. The gambling racket I could handle. That kind of danger never gets worse than shortening a finger or two. But when the trash disappeared on that plane...” He went quiet.

“You got scared?”

“No. I got smart. I didn’t know how deep his scheme went, but whatever it was, it was bad enough to disappear a plane and who knows how many bystanders. So I got out, and I got out fast. Back to real life.”

“Exciting real life.” Suzuna winked up at him.

He almost smiled back but caught himself and turned a disinterested stare ahead. They walked in silence again, but Suzuna added a little more skip to her step than usual. She knew inviting him to the festival was a good idea.

 

~*~

 

“Hey, finally tracked you down!” Panther arrived with arms full of festival food. Yakisoba, takoyaki, crepe, various grilled meats and even some pickled vegetables on sticks, it had been hard not to buy one of everything that was for sale. “Where’s Sena?”

“He went to get something to eat. He should have just waited, apparently.” Mamori eyed the haul skeptically with a bemused smile. That was good. It was getting easier to make sure she was smiling. She had also noticed the plastic masks perched on the back of his head, an ogre and a knock-off transformer/color ranger, carefully selected by his young personal shoppers.

“Where are the kids?”

“We ran into the gang from the orphanage, so they’re hanging with people their own age, not uncool old people like me,” Panther almost stepped on the mat with his sandals but stopped at the last second when he saw Mamori frown and kicked them off before sitting. “Did you know Madame Mariko went to college in Wisconsin? She’s the sweetest lady. I saw some kids from my spring camp team, it was awesome. Oh, and remember Ryouta? He's getting adopted!”

“Oh!” A kind of blissful expression filtered over her face. “That's wonderful... “

“Madame Mariko says there have been lots more adoptions since the spring camp,” he told her. “You made a big difference, for those kids.”

She was so submerged under a dreamy smile that she didn't even try to deflect the compliment. “That is really, really great news.”

He let her savour that information, feeling secretly pleased that he got to be the one to deliver it, and meanwhile tried to wrangle all the food into a manageable layout. It was probably best to eat the things that would get cold fastest first, but he was still debating which one to start with.

Mamori watched him from the corner of her eye. “Are you really going to eat all of that?”

“Well, I _can_ eat it all, but I was planning to share,” he grinned.

“I suppose there was no need to bring a picnic...” she looked back at the insulated bag of food she had brought. “Too healthy for a festival anyway, I guess.”

“Mamorineesan, your cooking will not be wasted!” Panther declared solemnly. “But first eat something greasy that you would never cook at home. That is the spirit of festival food!”

“It’s true some things are way too much trouble to make at home,” she carefully pulled a piece of karaage chicken onto a spare paper plate, “But you should probably not call me Mamorineesan.”

“Yeah? But... I probably won’t stop until you start calling me Panther.”

“I see...” she frown-smiled. “It’s not really the same thing.”

“Do you prefer Mama-mori?” he teased with a grin.

“Please don’t...” she laughed but her eyes were as sad as when she wasn’t smiling. Then she admitted quietly, “Hiruma gave me that name.”

“Of course he did...” Panther’s smile was softer than usual, and he let their playful banter drop. They ate wordlessly for a time, watching the crowd and one another while trying to not be noticed. When they had packed up the leftovers for the kids, Panther leaned back on the mat and pretended to look past her at the sky, fanning himself with a plastic fan plastered with a colorful advertisement for a mobile provider.

“Hey... you don’t have to answer this,” he said, “but how come you two never got married?”

She looked at him as if he were a tiny bit mad. “You said you knew Hiruma, that you were close. Can you honestly imagine him married?”

“Fair,” Panther shook his head with a gentle chuckle. “But be straight with me...”

“Because...” She looked back across the river, her eyes reflecting the water. Not sorrowful, not spiteful, just still. “He never belonged to me.”

She was quiet a moment, but she seemed to know those words weren’t enough. Eventually she continued. “If you were close to him then you know why we all love him. Things he doesn’t care about might as well not exist, but for the things he cares about, the people he cares about, he holds nothing back. He gives every last fibre of himself. His heart and soul, pure and intense and true. Crazy but unwavering. Not just to me. Of course, to the kids, but also to Sena. To Kurita, Musashi... and the others, too. There is no part of himself he holds back. There is no end to it. I think that is true love. Is there another name for it?”

He knew what she was describing. He hadn’t thought about how many other people had also been able to have that connection with him, even if at the time it seemed there was no one else. Was there another name for it?

“What is marriage anyway?” Mamori asked out loud. “A vow? A promise to be mine, to be faithful until the end before the eyes of the gods? Asking him to keep his heart for me and only me... would that even be possible? But... he had a strange thing about promises.”

Panther couldn’t help but chuckle again. “For a guy whose moral compass spun in all directions, yeah. He really did.”

“There are so many things I have asked of him that he would rather not do, but for some reason he promised, so he grinned and never failed. If I had asked that of him, marriage, I think he would have tried, but it would have only been a cage. A cage for that wild thing? No.”

Panther watched the way she dismissed the idea with no second thoughts. “So you gave that up, for him...”

She turned her peaceful gaze toward him. “What did I give up? I have everything.”

He was starting to think he did not understand the idea of marriage after all. “But you don’t have that security, the...”

“The vow... no.” She turned her hands around to examine her bare fingers, then folded them over her knees. “He did promise something, when he came back from America. A promise from that man is probably better than a sacred vow, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I think you’re probably right,” Panther smiled. “So, what did he promise?”

“When we are together things just work better. All the moving parts of the machine, the mundane machine of everyday life, just click together and whir and fly. So I asked him to stay. With me, with our family. Just to stay, that’s all.”

“You wanted to be his primary address,” Panther said.

“That’s right,” she smiled back. “And he promised.”

He watched her smile fade again, more slowly than the other times, but still it disappeared. Ever since that first time he saw it, it didn’t feel right unless she was smiling, and he had done whatever he could to keep one there on her face. Joking made her laugh but remembering Hiruma quietly like this was when her smiles lasted the longest. “You’re like him.”

He was being serious, but she laughed in response. “Don’t be ridiculous! We were always complete opposites. I’m nothing like him.”

“You give all of yourself, to everyone you care about,” he said softly, looking at her attentively, “without holding anything back.”

She glanced back at him, and caught her eyes on his. They locked. That was not supposed to happen. But once it had happened, everything else disappeared. Eyes, eyes, and heartbeats.

“No...” she breathed, “that is not quite true...”

He thought if he pushed himself up on his elbows he would be able to think more clearly but that only brought their eyes closer together and made his pulse double. “Does that mean... you’re holding back?”

They weren’t really that close, not like when she had been in his arms with her breath warm against his neck, but the space between them was short enough that the memory of it came alive. If he reached out, if one of them leaned a little closer...

“Are you gonna kiss?”

Mamori tore her eyes away abruptly, and Panther turned toward the voice. Yume stood ahead of them, unimpressed.

“Your mama just had something in her eye, so I was checking it out.” He had never found that excuse very convincing, but it was a better answer than guilty silence.

Yume glared at him with the steely eyes she inherited from her father. “I don’t like liars.”

“Where is your brother?” Mamori managed in an even voice.

Yume shrugged. “He’s catching bugs with his dumb friends.”

“Go find him please. The fireworks will start soon.”

They did not look at one another and they did not speak after Yume disappeared. If they didn’t speak of it, it wouldn’t become real. They couldn’t let it become real. Panther focused his eyes on the lanterns near the bridge, trying to calm his racing heart. Then he felt fingers wrap over his and take his hand.

“I did not promise to keep my heart for anyone, either,” she whispered, daring to look at him again. “But even so... it is not completely my own...”

She brushed a hand against his face and stole a kiss under the stars. For an instant it was light, daytime at night, but he did not even have time to kiss her back before she broke away, slipping her fingers out from his and folding her hands on her lap as the first fireworks cracked in the sky.

“Mamori...”

He couldn’t say anything else. Parallel universes had to be real, or heartbroken regret might become all that defined him. He had to put his faith in the idea that somewhere everyone was alive and in love and living happily ever after. But mostly he needed to believe that this thing between them, fated to be incomplete, wouldn’t be wasted. Maybe in a world somewhere just veiled from view it would be allowed to become whole.

The fireworks were slowly beginning to fill the sky when Sena arrived, oblivious to the tense energy between them. He moved to sit down. “Hey, it’s starting. Where are the kids?”

“Yume went to get Zak.” Mamori looked around. “They should be back by now...”

“It’s dark, and there are tons of people. Maybe they’re having trouble finding our spot.”

“She was just here...”

“I can go—ah, Yu-chan!” Sena stopped short as Yume arrived back in a rush, out of breath. Mamori started up anxiously. “Yume! Where’s Zak?”

“I don’t know!!” Yume’s usual confidence had completely left her. Instead she looked panicked, and a little afraid. “I looked! I couldn’t find him.”

“Did you ask the kids from the orphanage?”

“Of course I did! I checked with them first, they didn’t see where he went!”

“We’ll search for him,” Panther and Sena exchanged resolute looks. “We’ll split up, it will be faster.”

“I’ll go too!” Yume called after them. Her mother grabbed her around the shoulders to keep her from running off. “I can run, I’m fast!”

“We’ll go to the police booth. They can make an announcement.” Mamori said, still holding Yume against her. “If someone found him, they would take him there.”

“Let’s go!” Sena and Panther nodded in agreement and broke off running.

 

~*~

 

The first tentative fireworks burst in the sky and fizzled down like rain.

“Hey,” Agon shoved his hands in his pockets. He cleared his throat lightly but the voice that came out was still more gruff than usual. “Do you want to get married?”

Suzuna tipped her head to the side thoughtfully. “Hmm, maybe someday. If the right person comes along. It’s not my dream or anything, but I’m not ruling it out.”

Suzuna was satisfied with her response, but a glance at Agon suggested he was not. He was brooding, his mouth curled halfway between a pout and a scowl. “What, why are you making that face? You’re the one who asked.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking,” he muttered. He looked at the sky, then the ground, then the sky again, seemingly oblivious to the colourful explosions. “I meant, do you want to get married to me.”

Suzuna stared at him with the pleasant smile that she used when she did not really understand something. “Mm... You’re joking, right?”

“No,” he growled with a shrug that held the shadow of a tantrum. “Why would I joke about something like that?”

Her smile dropped as she forgot to take her next step. She tried to peer through the reflection of his shades but had to rely on his stance to read him. The tension in his muscles suggested a war between his will and some desperate desire to run.

“You’re serious...” she whispered, eyes wide with disbelief. Then she felt a giggle creeping up. She covered her face with her hand but it could not hide it from him. Agon turned and started back in the direction they had come from in short, brusque strides.

“Hey, Agonne...!” Suzuna tried to suppress her laughter as she chased after him, but without complete success. When she grabbed his hand he pulled it away, giving her an accusing look that sobered her immediately.

“I’m not laughing at you,” she tried to explain, but it sounded pathetic even in her own ears. “I’m laughing at myself.”

The same force that had held him before stayed his steps, but the contradiction became a sigh of frustration. “You really make me crazy. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the first time you’ve surprised me.”

He resumed his escape. Suzuna hopped after him, pulling at his sleeve only to be brushed off again. “Agonne! You can’t just say something like that and just disappear! I’m sorry I laughed, okay? So just tell me why... you... why you said that.”

“Because...”

At first it seemed like he would finish the phrase, but as the moments dragged on no answer came. She felt a sweet knot of pity form as he struggled with one of those few things he was not very good at.

“Because...” she smiled helpfully, “you like me?”

He looked at her with another scowl, as though she were a pineapple ice cream cone that he had not asked for. Suzuna was almost certain he was going to try to run away again, but instead he cracked a crooked half-smile. “Yeah. I like you.”

They stood a moment exchanging stupid little grins until it started to become awkward.

“Hey,” Suzuna broke the silence. “Have you ever asked someone this before?”

“No.”

“Not even as a joke?”

“It’s not a joke.”

“Not even when you were really drunk?”

“Heuh? I don’t suddenly become an idiot just because I had a few drinks!”

“Not even for immigration papers?”

“What?”

“Not even in Las Vegas!?”

“My God, woman what do you want from me!? I said no, I meant no!”

“And,” she eyed him innocently, “Why not?”

“What, why have I never asked anyone to marry me before? Do I have to ask someone? Is there a law?”

“You have had lots of girlfriends. A few of them must have been special. You never thought of marrying any of them?”

“None of them deserved me.”

It was such a perfectly Agon reply she could not help but smile, but she refrained from rolling her eyes. It was only later that she noticed the compliment hidden within his self-important statement.

“Maybe it would be convenient, to have someone take care of me,” he went on, “but I can take care of myself. Marriage is for suckers.”

“Hey, Agonne!” Suzuna let her laughter ring out, this time without a care about damaging his pride. He had to know how ridiculous he sounded. “You are not making a very strong case for yourself!”

“That’s different!” Agon ground his teeth as he searched for an explanation. He picked up a stone near his feet and threw it toward the river. It seemed impossibly far, but a series of ripples suggested he actually made the target. He unearthed another rock with his shoe and weighed it in his hand. “That trash with the piercings is an idiot.”

“Huh?” Suzuna blinked quizzically. “Why are you bringing You-nii into this?”

“If something is precious to you, you don’t let it go. You defend it with your life. He should have married that woman.” Agon let the stone fly.

“Mamo-nee? I mean, they are basically married... But—”

“Exactly. You know the reason they are not married is because of him. He thinks it doesn’t matter, he thinks that it is all the same. He is an idiot. I am smarter than him—I’ve always been a thousand times smarter than him, and I will not sink to his level. I won’t take chances with you. I won’t let you go. I’ll defend you with my life.”

Suzuna felt her heartbeat in her throat. He wasn’t looking at the sky or the river or the rocks. He was looking at her. “Are you... saying...?” She thought she knew him inside and out, but this was outside the realm of prediction.

“I’m saying it doesn’t look like you’re gonna stop getting yourself into dangerous situations for a long time. And you should let me be there with you.” His tone was almost joking until he abruptly switched modes. “But you should say no.”

“No?! Then why—”

“I treat you like garbage. That’s how I treat people and most people deserve it, so whatever. But if anyone else treated you the way I treat you I would rip out their larynx and break both their ankles. I’d be beyond pissed if you married a guy like me. I would sabotage the wedding. I’d steal all your shoes so you couldn’t show up—”

“—my... shoes—?”

“—and obviously I would fight that bastard. I’d beat the shit out of him until he couldn’t even remember your name.”

Suzuna laughed at his gruesome nuptial scene. “So, on our wedding day, can I expect you to show up on crutches covered in blood?”

“Ah, damn,” he frowned, “It is going to be hard to carry my barefoot bride if I am on crutches...”

“You could refrain from breaking your own ankles,” Suzuna suggested.

“See, this is why I can’t let you go.”

They exchanged strange looks of affection again.

“Was that a ‘yes’?”

“I am still not sure if you are really serious about that question,” Suzuna replied with a mischievous grin. “It feels like something is missing...”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Agon tucked his shades in his hair and moved toward her. “But you forget, I am a genius at everything I do.”

Suzuna closed her eyes and waited for the kiss of true love, but the waiting stretched on.

“Hey,” Agon’s voice was close but not within kissing range. “You can look now.”

When she opened her eyes he was kneeling, holding some ridiculously tiny glittering thing between his fingers. Suzuna felt her lungs fill so quickly she thought she might faint. “You really meant it...”

“I had to go to the dentist section to find one small enough,” he grinned.

“Fuu!!!” she protested, swatting at his head, secretly pleased that for once she could look down on him. He ignored her outburst except to snatch her hand mid-strike.

“Taki Suzuna,” he said, “Put this shiny, expensive thing on your finger while you think about how every good thing I am capable of will be reserved for you until I die. If that’s what you want, let me know, and we’ll teach the world a thing or two about marriage.”

As Suzuna watched the light of the lanterns and the fireworks catch on her hand, she was not sure she had ever been so confused and so happy at the same time. “I thought I had you all figured out...” she smiled, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. “I guess I was wrong.”

She slipped her arms around his neck, leaning in for the kiss of true love. But a rush of wind and a blurred shape of a man interrupted the moment.

“Suzuna!! Ag...oooon.... Oh... ” Sena had a look of desperation when he arrived but backed up when he realized what he was interrupting. “Oh... I’m... so, so sorry...!”

Agon looked ready to rage, but Suzuna recognised the urgency in Sena’s movements. “Sena, what’s wrong!?”

“It’s Zak-kun, he’s missing!” Sena said between breaths. “Have you seen him?”

“The trash’s brat?” Agon said, exchanging a troubled look with Suzuna.

“We’re looking everywhere, just... if you can watch for him... after all the kids that have been disappearing, we’re really worried.”

“Agonne...”

“I know,” Agon put his shades over his eyes, despite the fact it was well and officially night. “Let’s go.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: marriage ---I know I know: "What about taxes? you ask, "What about hospital visiting rights?" FAIR POINTS ALL!! (And really the latter one seems enough to compel a marriage of convenience between Mamori and Hiruma...)


	7. Cargo

After the damn midget trash had ruined all his careful plans for the future, Agon was more than ready to make somebody's bones crack. But he had to wait. Shortie convinced him that they should first stake out the warehouse to gather information before busting in, so they could make an effective strike without giving them warning by mistake. So the first few hours were spent listening to her weird military radio and waiting.

She still hadn't answered that question he had asked.

After hours of waiting, the most beautiful words came over the transmitter : "Get it moving. If the prize isn't on the 700 hours to MTZ there will be hell to pay." It was obviously a command to move something important, like a stolen kid. Finally, time for some action.

The two of them snuck between trucks through the loading docks, following the clatter of a cargo gate being raised. It had been hours since they had seen any other activity in the vicinity. The closer they got, the more they could hear. That end of the warehouse must have been where they held the dog fights; the yapping of mutts nearly drowned the voice of the man yelling at them to shut up. Agon counted a half-dozen goons with an assortment of firearms at the ready, not including the ones who were hauling a crate from the back of the warehouse. He smiled with satisfaction and anticipation. It looked serious. They had definitely come to the right place.

They were still a few loading gates away, but the closer they came to the cargo bay the clearer the sound of whimpering became. It was a dog crate but not a dog's cry.

"Zak?!" he heard Suzuna whisper, even though she knew better.

Before he could stop her, she had pulled herself up the short metal ladder, looking for the brat, presumably, but dammit!— Agon grabbed her and pulled her back out of view, resisting the angry growl that he wanted her to hear and remember. The last thing they needed was attention at that particular moment. His heart pounded in his chest. He could definitely take out all those guards, but they had weapons that he did not, and there was this fool of a woman to worry about.

"When is the damn tranquilizer going to kick in?" someone complained. "The brat makes this kind of noise at the gate and it won't matter how many people we got in customs."

There was an impatient reply but Agon was busy listening to the scuff of boots on the concrete above them, getting louder, closer. One of the guards had noticed something. Agon pushed Suzuna behind him against the wall. If the lookout didn't come too close, the lip of the loading dock might block them from view. If not... Agon pulled his breath as slowly and quietly as he could. Shortie was holding her breath, like an idiot, not thinking about how she'd need to breathe in hard and fast sooner or later. Agon stared at the space above them, waiting for the suspicious guard to appear. Maybe the full course meal was too much trouble, but he could take this one guy out, he thought, quickly and quietly enough the others wouldn't even notice. He smirked. _Come on, just step a little closer_... But the guard's steps turned away without sounding any alarm.

By the time it seemed safe to peer over the ledge again, the crate had been loaded on a trailer, the type for hauling luggage to planes on the tarmac.

"7am, MTZ..." Her thoughts were just a breath in his ear. He nodded. She wasn't an idiot. Militaropolis' airport code. Just beyond the warehouses and dockyards, the airport runway stretched on and on, lined with hangars and maintenance sheds. Each day freight moved from plane to warehouse, warehouse to plane. What passed through would depend on who controlled the security gates, the loading and unloading, and the planes. Whoever controlled those things could move anything they wanted.

They hurried toward their target, still following close along the wall out of sight, although at that point he couldn't see what they could do. The truck was already pulling away with the baggage trailer and half the guards in its flat. The guards that remained behind began closing the rolling metal door to the loading bay.

Suzuna watched desperately as the truck drove off, her eyes flying around in all directions as she tried to decide what to do next. Finally she sprinted toward where his car was hidden, not far away, and Agon followed, matching her pace with brusque strides. Darkness hid them easily once they were beyond reach of the warehouse’s floodlights and he should have been able to relax, but something nagged at his mind. They hadn't been spotted, but they hadn't intercepted the kid either. Why hadn't he stormed the gate? They could be on their way home already, stepping over the broken bodies of those sick fucks and laughing, victorious. But he hadn't.

They tailed the truck until it entered the airfield at the inspection gate. It passed through without resistance, but Agon doubted they would be able to do the same. Shortie watched the truck driving further away with tiny binoculars— if he had to guess, she kept them around so she felt like a real detective, and it was just a fluke that they ended up being useful this time. As she peered through the viewfinders he could see her thinking, flicking through scenarios, dead ends, possible openings. He wondered what this cute little thing would come up with next.

"Looks like they're putting Zak on a SoraAir flight," she said, dropping the binoculars to her lap. "Probably in cargo."

Agon didn't need to nod for her to know he agreed.

"We could call the police..." It sounded like she felt obligated to say it.

"We could, but it wouldn't do anything," he said, as she must have expected him to. He didn't elaborate on that point. She knew why. But he added, "In Militaria it would be even more pointless. Police corruption is the operating principle in places like that." That was how outfits like that got away with what they did. And why they operated where they did.

"We have to stop them."

"Not without a plan."

"I know..." She bit her lip. "If we break into the hangar we're probably not going to get far without getting caught. But they won't have guards on him once the plane is at the terminal, will they?"

"Maybe, but not as many. But we can't infiltrate the baggage handlers, they've got to have their guys planted there already." Compared to getting a mole into customs, baggage staff would be simple, and with this type of crime nothing was left to chance.

"We'll get on the flight. Seven AM to Militaria, it can't be sold out."

"As if they will let us on,” Agon dismissed the idea, “They already think I'm involved somehow."

"Should I go on my own?" She looked at him with tense stare, that stray lock of hair falling across her eyes as always.

He grit his teeth and sucked in his breath. Either she had forgotten or she didn't care, he had been an idiot to confess. He forced himself to shrug. "Go ahead. If you think you can take care of it on your own, fine."

“Of course I can't, silly.” She smiled like something in his reaction had reminded her of a secret. Then all traces of teasing melted away under the flutter of her eyelashes and her voice was saturated with warm, glowing emotion. "I need you.”

It was exactly the voice he had wanted to hear when he asked her that question. Ahhhh dammit, did that mean yes? He was still an idiot for letting someone mess with his head like she did. How long was she going to make him wait before giving him an answer? How many times would he forgive her for making him so damn crazy?

Suzuna, however, hadn't forgotten the kidnapping. “If they won't let you on, then you'll need a disguise..."

It sounded like she already had something in mind, and from the size of her idiotic smile he didn't think he was going to like it. Unfortunately, he was right.

"I'm so happy you are a twin right now!" she chirped.

"No. Don't even think about it.” He tried to extinguish the thought from her mind. “I won't do it. Do you have any idea how long it took to grow back after those bastards shaved it that time? Any other country and maybe, maybe, for the damn brat. But Militaria can go to hell. Forget it."

It didn't matter: she was already making a call. “Hey Unsunyan, wake up! We need to borrow your passport!”

~*~

When he woke, Panther realized his head was leaning heavily on Mamori’s shoulder, and he lifted it with a jolt. That wasn't what he was going for. It was supposed to be his shoulder for her to lean on, that's how it had started, with his arms around her to keep all the pieces together if she needed to break down. Well, his arms were still somehow draped around her, but only loosely. It was not very protective.

"Did you sleep?" he asked, trying to be ask quiet as the room around him. There was light in the windows but no birds. Mamori was still sitting upright on the couch, her eyes half open, looking nowhere in particular, not even at the TV where the muted news station unraveled its comments on the developing typhoon in subtitles. The storm was still a few days away, its route and size speculated in graphics on the screen. She moved her head slowly, trance-like, as if to say no. One hand rested on her cellphone, positioned to flip the cover open within a split-second at the slightest sound; the other ran absently through Yume's wild black hair as her daughter slept, curled on the couch beside them with her head on her mother's lap. He barely remembered the girl creeping downstairs after they had gotten back, so late that it had nearly been early morning, joining them as they watched the local news, anxiously waiting any updates.

The night before reassembled in his mind as the sleep dissolved: the panic that fuelled the search, the dread that descended on them when Zak's sandal was found under the bridge. “No... not the river. Please! He can swim! Not the river...” Mamori desperately repeated, as if trying to bargain for his life. The police chief had only pointed out the scenarios that she was trying to erase: Snagged on a submerged branch, even a strong swimmer could be dragged under. If he hit his head, well, all swimmers sink when they are unconscious.

From the moment the police and volunteers began prodding the river with their long bamboo poles, Mamori had become numb to everything around her. Sena had taken Yume home as the crowds of festival goers streamed away, every child that could pass as a seven-year-old double checked upon exit. Mamori remained long after the festival grounds were empty, staring helplessly in the direction of the search. When the police had sent her home, assuring her they would call with any news, she had not responded, not even when Panther lead her to the taxi. It had been hard to tell if she was aware he was there at all. He walked her all the way to her front step to be sure she was home safely. It was only then, when she gripped his hand in the entry before he could turn to leave, that he realized she was really there, mentally present behind that blank expression. Her senses had not been overloaded. She was fully conscious and aware; fully aware that there was nothing she could do but wait.

Mamori held his hand tightly, as if afraid he would slip away, but she could not bring herself to look at him, and she did not speak.

"Sena doesn't need me," he told her after a long moment.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not a 'sorry' thing."

"It's not fair to you..."

Panther shrugged. "Life's not fair."

"Before..."

That one word escaped but no others. He remembered again the saddest kiss he had ever known. It had joined his heart closer to hers, but that kiss had been a closed door.

“Hey, I'm still the guy who takes care of people,” he said, but he didn't cradle her face in his hands like he wanted to, or kiss her gently, or gather her in his arms and carry her off someplace where he could tell her everything was going to be fine without the risk of being a liar. Instead, he watched her struggle to stand tall a little longer. She managed to stand but her fingers shook.

“You can keep on trying to look as strong as long as you want to, but if your heart isn't shattered in a million pieces right now, then I don't even know who you are. You can't hang on to all that by yourself,” he said, trying to meet her eyes. Then he squeezed her hand. “I'm still here.”

For a moment she had just stood, each breath forced and hard as she stared at the door of the house where her son had grown up. When she cast her eyes up at him she did not hide her despair. No defenses, no excuses, no artificial coating of politeness. He didn't know anything to do other than hug her tight against him, as he would anyway if she were a child or just a friend. She breathed into his shoulder like the weight of all those innumerable, terrible events was crushing her lungs and forcing the air out against her will. He couldn't tell how long they had stood like that before she finally started to breathe more smoothly, without tension and struggle pulling at each breath. For all the pain in her breathing, his shoulder remained dry.

Inside the house, her movements were forced and automatic like someone in a trance, but she still tended to the things that needed to be tended to. She took out the food she had made for the festival so he could eat something while she went upstairs to change out of her yukata. She brought some spare clothes when she came back down so that he could do the same. A man's black t-shirt. A presence. She turned away as she held it out to him, but when he offered to trade his yukata for the shirt, she glanced back to take it. In that brief movement she caught a glimpse of the hand-carved design of a snarling cat that stretched down his bare ribs to the waist of his shorts.

He had seen so many reactions to it, when someone saw his scars for the first time: there was usually fear of a variety of kinds, sometimes nauseous, or panicked, but always recoiling. But Mamori looked up with a flash of surprise followed by an unwavering gaze, knowing and pained as though all her compassion was extending out to wrap around him. So many times he had wanted to lay down his soul for her when she had looked at him like she could see inside him, but this look... it felt as though he had been waiting years for someone to look at him this way.

He slipped the shirt over his head, pulling it down to cover the marks. Of course, it was not her first time seeing this. She must have memorized every curve of the scars that made up the matching pair. The things that bound them together were also damned to keep them apart.

It didn’t feel like he had slept long in that awkward, half-sitting position, but the news marquee said it was already ten in the morning. He could hear her mother in the kitchen washing dishes; she had probably already made breakfast but had not wanted to wake them. Panther stretched his arms and eased off the couch—if she couldn’t sleep she should at least try to eat. Before he could coax her to get up, however, the news flicked to the next headline and Panther found himself suddenly captivated. The screen showed football players, Americans, but it was not gameplay footage. Instead, it showed the team standing at attention— standing for the anthem, he knew, even without the sound, from the way some of them held their hands over their hearts. All but one, who sat. He recognised that man.

“Kaep...?” Panther breathed, dumbfounded at the act. The video cut to an interview with the player, but when Panther pounded the volume button higher, the English voice was drowned out behind the Japanese translation. He tried to puzzle out any meaning from the subtitles on the screen, but the few characters he recognised weren't much help.

Behind him, a digital chiming erupted from Mamori’s phone. She snatched it up suddenly, startling Yume out of her sleep.

“Yes, hello?! Is it—” Mamori began anxiously, but stopped as the voice on the other line replied. When she responded, it was in English. “Yes, General... Of course... Of course...” She glanced at her watch. “That’s fine, thank you. Yes. I’m sorry for the trouble.”

She pressed the button to end the call, looking at her phone as though she had never seen one before.

“General... As in General Gomery? From the All-Star Camp?” Panther could only guess at why he might be calling. He looked to Mamori for explanation.

Mamori nodded, and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to tell him anything. Finally she spoke. “He says... there might be some information about Hiruma. He wants me to look at it.”

Mamori called the police station before they left, anxious for news about the search, and on the train to the embassy she glanced at her phone constantly.

~*~

It was incredible how stupid people were. Change your hair, change your clothes, walk like you've got a stick up your ass, and suddenly you can pass off as another person. It might help that the person he was passing off as was technically his identical twin. But in real life, even an idiot wouldn’t mistake Agon for his brother. He suspected it had also helped that he had been particularly charming with the stewardess when he handed her his ticket, more out of habit than anything else. What else could explain being allowed to board without question?

Anyway, there he was, trying to sleep in the seat of what must have been the smallest aircraft Boeing ever produced, not entirely convinced it could make it the full ten hours across the Asian subcontinent. Would this be the second SoraAir flight to disappear en route to that godforsaken country? His scalp itched.

_You are not your hair,_ Shortie had teased him. Of course not. But it was a mark of how many fucks he did not give about rules or consequences. From a hundred meters away, anyone who saw him must already recognise he was an exception. No one else dared. From one glance they would know he was someone to fear or respect or, at the very least, watch out for, and would act accordingly. His hair wasn't who he was, but it was messaging, which was not as important as the fact of being exceptional but it was damn useful. Even the slimy bleach-blonde trash knew that, and tried to make it work for him even though he was not special in the slightest. Well, he was special, but in his especially trashy way.

In the other side of the cabin, Suzuna had her face glued to the window, watching the Earth and clouds below with a bright glow that made him wonder if she had forgotten how much danger they were putting themselves in. She had denied him his signature Oakleys as part of his disguise, but she had big sunglasses of her own perched on the top of her head, dangling earrings that flashed in the light, and a cashmere scarf in a thousand bright colours. The whole get-up made her seem like a fabulous movie star. He had to admit that when she had dashed out of her apartment with her well-travelled bag after barely ten minutes inside, he had hardly recognised her. It might just work, this crazy plan of hers. The ring still glittered on her finger and he still didn't know her answer, but he had promised to try to keep her from getting killed and she was making good on her side of the deal: keeping him from getting bored with her insane plans. He couldn't complain. Only one other person had made him feel like this before, and that guy was long gone.

“Hey, Mister? Hey!” Only when she tugged on his sleeve after the second or third attempt did he realize she was whispering to him. They had ignored one another at the airport, boarded separately and sat at opposite sides of the tiny aircraft. But there were no passengers seated between them, and she was small enough that she had been able to slide closer to him without drawing much attention, from what he could tell from a glance at one of the uglier nearby passengers, at least. It seemed to be true that members of the underworld favoured this airline.

“What?” Agon muttered through his teeth.

“I heard the best way to see the country is by renting a scooter,” she said in a curious tone, as though she were speaking to a stranger. At first it annoyed him that she would risk blowing their cover for a ridiculous question like that, but she gave him a meaningful look. “I read it in the on-flight magazine. Have you ever tried it?”

“No, sorry lady. I don't know anything about it.”

When the plane finally landed, Agon went straight to the rental desk at the terminal exit that the magazine had described. Militaria locals were lined up along the curb in taxis and motorized tricycles, offering to drive him wherever he wanted to go, but he ignored them. He tossed the smallest-sized helmet available in the empty sidecar of the knock-off Vespa and settled into the driver's seat. She had not followed him, and it made him anxious.

At that moment she should be watching the cargo unload, following whoever picked up the dog crate so they could follow it after it left the airport. It sounded impossible, but the Militaropolis International Airport was pathetic enough it just might work. There was only a single runway and the building itself had exactly two gates. There wouldn't be many places to go... but what if she lost sight of it? How long should he wait before he had to conclude she was caught and that someone had to die by his hand?

He slipped his helmet on, the interior padding pressing directly against the skin of his scalp, wondering again if they had made the right decision. They could have made their move already on the tarmac where they disembarked, revealing the unconscious kid to the onlooking passengers right there after beating the shit out of the baggage handlers and anyone else who tried to stop them.

But Shortie had another plan. A plan that was supposed to catch two birds in one fist. It was stupid, stupid and crazy and complete wishful thinking, but he had let her convince him that they had to try. She wanted to follow the brat to the hostage exchange, the one they had heard about through their secret recordings, on the chance that the one to claim him was a dead man walking. Agon curled his hands around the grips of the handlebars and frowned again. This was the kind of thing that was bound to happen when he cut off his hair... waiting instead of striking, and going along with such hopeful, sappy garbage. That fool trash was dead and she was going to be so disappointed. Dead was dead was dead.

Then suddenly Suzuna was there, calling out directions as she jumped in the sidecar, and he tore off with a tight, screeching turn, cutting off traffic in both directions in the process. After they wove through the concrete city the rest was road falling away beneath them, the dry plains flashing past and blurring into walls of rock as they gained the mountains, higher and colder. All to keep their sights on the shape of a single battered truck. The payload.

The scooter must have had more horsepower than he had guessed, or else the truck was such a piece of shit they were able to keep up. By nightfall it had reached a town that seemed impossibly far from civilization. It had all the trappings of a sleepy tourist town, so different from the harsh concrete cityscape of Militaropolis. They trailed the truck to the end of a side street and watched the men unload the crate into a building that resembled a shed. This became Agon and Suzuna's new stake-out location. They loitered at the nearest corner, pretending to consult a tourist guide book while keeping one eye on the door. When nosey locals tried to helpfully intervene, Suzuna kept them busy while Agon’s sights stayed focused on the end of the street. Once he saw a man come with steaming baskets of what must have been food and another time he saw someone else leave, but nothing that could mask a kid being transferred.

Suzuna had disappeared for a time but now tugged twice on his sleeve. One tug meant he was supposed to look at something without making a scene, and twice meant she had something to tell him.

“Yeah?” He replied without turning his eyes from the shed. His breath billowed like steam before him; it was only the last week of August, but it was cold at night in this mountain town. He had already put up the thin hood of his jacket to cut the chill.

“You're going to be proud of me,” she beamed.

That could mean anything. “Why's that?”

“I got us a place to stay tonight,” she said.

“Alright, so go take a nap for a bit and switch with me later.”

“Tee hee, no need.” She pointed to the second floor of the building beside them. “The lady who lives upstairs is renting out her spare room. That's it.” The window she was pointing toward was almost perfectly opposite the shed they were watching. The view would be unobstructed. Agon grinned and messed up her hair. “You are really incredible, you know that?”

Their landlady was also the type to cook, and she happily brought a meal to their room and supplied them with an endless stream of hot cocoa, leaving them to stake out the location in comfort. It was almost more difficult to watch the shed intently and stay ready to chase after their target at any moment like this, with the waiting so relaxed, like a getaway vacation. Ever since the kid went missing, Suzuna's usual cheerfulness had been thin, underpinned by alert anxiety (still damn cute), but after a few hours of spying from the glowing warm room her tension faded. Before long she was giggling like mad at some lame wisecrack he had made.

“You’re cracking up like you’re on drugs or something,” Agon frowned, secretly pleased to be the cause of her laughter. “Maybe the old lady spiked the cocoa.”

The suggestion made her laugh even harder. He snatched the mug from her hands, as if his point had been made, keeping an eye on the window. “Alright, you're delirious. Go to sleep so you can take the midnight shift.”

Suzuna flopped on the bed, bouncing a little on the springs as she nuzzled against the handmade quilt. “Thanks for coming,” she said with a warm smile.

Agon turned away to face the window more directly. “A bit early to thank me, isn't it?”

“Nah-uh...” She was still smiling, he could tell just from her voice. “Just to come all this way, without any warning... you surprised me again.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Agon replied. “You thought I wouldn't come?”

“You don't like trouble,” she reminded him. “And you've never really travelled before.”

“I’ve traveled tons, what’re you talking about?”

“Only to resorts and casinos. Not like this...”

“Kukuku, no, sure as hell not like this.”

“Are you having fun?” she asked in a mischievous voice, picking up on his laughter.

He grunted and finished her cocoa. “Go to sleep.”

“Let's come back here sometime,” she said through a yawn, pulling the blankets back, “when we aren't on a dangerous mission. We can check out the amazing ski trails that those guidebooks keep going on about, and take our time and eat all the local foods. Maybe we can find a hot spring, or at least a spa...”

“Do you want me to smother you with a pillow or something?” he asked.

“Can you smother me _and_ watch the look-out point?” she teased, but burrowed under the covers and closed her eyes nonetheless.

Outside the window, nothing had changed. Agon tried to stay focused on the wooden door of the shed and the crack of light that escaped from under it, but it took all his concentration to keep his attention there. There was a woman laying in the bed beside him who made him so confused. She was categorically not his type, according to years of dedicated personal research, yet something had possessed him to buy a goddamn ring and propose to her. Any ordinary woman would have answered him without hesitating, and recognised what a damn honor he was bestowing on her. This one, though... She could look him in the face and laugh at him. Normal people, the ones who valued their lives, knew better, but she wasn't afraid— and despite the hundreds of times he had accused her, she wasn't stupid, either. Only one other person dared to openly laugh at him, but it was different with her. When she laughed at him, she seemed to expect him to laugh along with her.

She had to say yes. He wouldn't be worried if he had been working on winning her over, but he had also wasted exactly zero charm on her. In fact, most of the time he had been focused on trying to get her to piss off about the damn yakuza and his childhood frenemy. Why would she say yes? He would be disappointed in her if she said yes.

But still, he held out a hope that she would, despite all that, actually say yes. Over all those months he had been condescending toward her, she only teased him for being a jerk and grinned as if the jackass that he was was only an act or a joke. As if there was more to him than that. Who knows where she got all her crazy ideas from...

“Agonne...” Suzuna murmured.

“What?” he replied, annoyed that she was still not asleep but glad to have a distraction. Maybe she had dreamed up more vacation plans that she had to regale him with.

She sounded half asleep when she whispered, “I love you.”

He slid his gaze toward her, still acutely aware she had not answered his question, but for some reason it didn't matter. He reached out and let his hand rest on the lump in the blanket closest to him, what must have been her foot. After that, watching was easy.

~*~

The Militaria embassy staff wore stiff jackets and their movements were precise. In a cavernous meeting room they placed a folder in front of Mamori. She opened it to find a small stack of photographs, no more than six in total, all of which seemed to have been taken at roughly the same time and location. They showed a small village, the colour of sand, populated with townsfolk whose drab clothing of wool and fur draped around them as they went about their business with wooden carts and diesel scooters. A few wore a semiautomatic or a rifle slung across their shoulders, as casually as a woman might carry a handbag. A herd of woolly goats was being driven through the street, some blurred children running among them. In the widest angle shot the tops of snow-capped mountains lined the background, as though the town was perched among them. The closer images framed a man who walked along with the herd.

Mamori’s eyes rapidly scanned the photos, her fingers shaking lightly as she dropped each one from the top of the stack to the table. When she reached the last photo, she arranged them carefully side by side. Then she turned to the Militaria staff. “Where?”

“In our country, near the northern border. Far from any place you would have heard of. This place is forgotten by anyone who wasn’t born there. The closest town with a road is a day away by horseback, a resort town.”

“How long ago?”

“Three days.”

She looked at the photos again, and Panther tried to follow her gaze. Most of the men and some of the women wore scarves over their faces, perhaps to keep out the wind or dust, some only showing a slit of their face. Panther searched for any familiar eyes. He found them among the goats.

“The shepherd?” he asked in a whisper. The camera had trained on him, after all.

Mamori looked as dazed as she had all morning and just as devastated. It was hard to tell what effect the photos might be having on her. “What else do you know?”

“For now, very little. The townspeople say he moves through the village with the flock on occasion, but mostly keeps to the mountains. They say he is foreign, but poor men are sometimes foreign, and goat herding is the work of the poorest of men. Little else is known. Is it him?”

Mamori only stared. Her gaze moved across the shots that showed the narrow eyes between the cloth at slightly different angles. Finally, she pushed the photos together into a neat stack and closed the folder. “No, I’m sorry. It must be someone else.”

She stood to take her leave, thanking the Militaria officers for their time and apologizing for the effort they had made. Panther stared at her in disbelief. Other than her own children, who else had eyes like that?

~*~

It was almost exactly dawn when Suzuna saw movement outside the shed. A group of men, some openly carrying weapons, grouped around the door. She shook Agon and tossed him his jacket.

“What's happening?” he asked, peering out the window.

“I don't know. These guys just showed up. They've been talking for a minute. Maybe it's the exchange,” she replied as she rushed to pull on her sweater and zipped her bag shut.

As Agon watched, the men they had followed from the truck emerged with something large draped in a blanket, propped up by wooden poles. Two of the new men took hold of them and carried it between them.

“Confirmation on the payload.” Agon reported.

“You mean Zak-kun? Can you see him?”

“No, but they’re moving the crate.” Agon frowned. The men were too friendly. “It's not the exchange. They're relocating. On foot.”

“Are you sure?” she peered out the window, “What if he's not even in there? It might be a decoy, to get us off the scent.”

Agon nodded, a little proud she had the sense to think of that. “It doesn't look like they left guards on the shed. I'll turn it upside down. You keep on their trail, just in case,” he told her.

Suzuna nodded with a serious expression, knowing any misstep could be the end for them or for the kid. It was cute, this look, but it bothered him, too.

“Yo,” he called after her just as they moved to split up.

She turn back toward him, her dark blue eyes wide with a look of concern.

“Don't lose them, babe,” he said.

A smile broke over her face, just like he had hoped. She flashed him a peace sign and she continued after the group with a skip in her step.

The shed was empty, with no guards, no innocent townsfolk and not even any rubbish left behind to suggest anyone had squatted there the night before. It wasn't long before he had caught up with Suzuna to tail the group, which was already gaining some distance outside of the town limits. Agon had thought that resort town had been the ends of the Earth, but looks were deceiving. The rest of the day involved lurking out of sight while hiking, trying to keeping enough distance behind the small group of travellers on the rough trails that they wouldn't be spotted as they moved deeper into the mountains. He hadn't thought they could get deeper. The trail was narrow and rocky and winding, which at least gave them plenty of cover and made the group of human traffickers difficult to lose.

By the time their quarry made camp in a clearing in the high valley, the sun was disappearing behind the mountains. One of the unarmed men built a fire in the still-bright glow of twilight.

“Damn it...” Agon muttered, watching the camp go up from their hiding spot behind some boulders. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

“What is it?” Suzuna chirped, passing him what must have been his tenth granola bar. Somehow she had the presence of mind to load her bag up with the stuff during their whirlwind stop at her apartment before the airport. The cute bag he had assumed would be full of clothes was instead keeping them from starving.

But it wasn't going to keep them from freezing to death in the mountains. The temperature had dropped several degrees as they climbed higher. Agon had put his wig on for warmth, but he had watched enough outdoor adventure documentaries over Unsui's shoulder to know that however cold it was in the day, in high altitudes like this it was going to be ten times worse at night with no clouds to trap the heat. Deadly cold... and he had said he was going to keep her from getting killed.

“We can't wait for the exchange.” he told her. “We've got to move now.”

“But we came all this way!” Suzuna protested.

“There is no way we’ll survive the night without a fire. If we manage to build one, they're going to catch us. I'm not interested dying out here. So the only choice is to take them out now.”

“But...” she tried to come up with an alternative. “But what about Y— Hey, wait!!”

Agon had already hoisted himself over their protective stone barrier and was marching directly to the camp. He could take them all, no problem. There were eight men, but only four had firearms, from what he could tell. Well, they could try to hit him, but he had God-Speed Impulses and all those years of practice dodging bullets in college. This was sport. Nostalgic and appropriate. If these bastards were responsible for the end of the most reliably entertaining shit in his life, the piece of trash manager of his innocent little fighting ring hobby, this would be the perfect vengeance.

There was still enough light they could see him approaching as plain as day, and they began firing before he had even come in range. He wove through the shots, using the sides of the pass as a surface for his maneuvers until finally he was among them, pulling them close to his fists, cracking joints, exploding pressure points, drinking in the fear in their eyes. .

The last man dropped to the ground and Agon turned back to the place he and Suzuna had been hiding. She would probably want to see the kid as soon as it was safe— to be honest, he was surprised she hadn't rushed in as soon as the gunmen had been taken out. Maybe she was finally learning some sense.

“Yo,” he shouted when she didn't appear near the boulders. “Hurry up and get over here.”

There was a long second before she appeared, and he felt a sick feeling in his gut. A sound, one that had maybe been faint while he was fighting the yakuza lackies but he hadn't paid attention to then, was growing steadily louder. A rhythmic, throbbing roar. When Suzuna stepped out into the clearing of the trail, she was accompanied by a man in full army fatigue. ‘Accompanied’ was the wrong word; she was being held at gunpoint. Agon surveyed the walls of the mountain pass, now dotted with military men emerging from their cover, just before an Apache helicopter broke over the crest of the nearest peak, then a second. The American fucking military?! Before he knew it, Agon was being swarmed by the bastards, searched for weapons and restrained. He wanted to scream. After all that headache, to save that brat and take out those fuckers, was he actually being treated like a criminal?!

He heard Suzuna call his name, with the extra syllable like she always did, and he thought how guys like this were probably the one thing he would not be able to protect her from. His only chance at walking free was not to lift a finger against them, but they could do whatever they wanted with them if they thought the two of them were enemy combatants.

Beyond the thunder of the helicopter blades he could hear something else. A gentle racket, really, clanging of metal, a tiny chorus of bleating, and an all-too-familiar cackle.

“Kehkehkeh!”

Agon felt his chest seize. It was too dark to see anything past the lights of the choppers, but he didn't need to see to believe in resurrection. “Damn bloody piece of trash...”

They had moved Suzuna close enough to him by that point that he could watch her whole face light up. “You-nii!!!?”

“Keh, fucking dreads, how am I supposed to exchange hostages without anyone to exchange with?”

A shape emerged from the dark, a man almost completely enveloped in wool skins and draped cloth, with an assault rifle slung over each shoulder. He pulled the scarf from his face to reveal that familiar, unhinged smile. Hiruma led a brace of men by a rope, their hands tied behind them, surrounded by goats.

“What a waste. Well, I guess I’ll have to hand you over to the next bidder.” Hiruma grinned and tossed the rope to the nearest military personnel.

“Hey, You-tchin,” the lieutenant asked, gesturing with a nod of his head to Agon and Suzuna, “You know these operants?”

“You-tchin!” Suzuna breathed, as if impressed by the nickname. Only she could appreciate such nonsense while they were being held under some kind of military arrest.

“Keh! Yeah, troublemakers!” Hiruma laughed but kept walking past them.

“Hey, wait!!” Suzuna called after him. “You-nii! What happened!? How did you escape?!”

She had struck on something that the trash couldn't bear to pass up. Hiruma stopped and looked back over his shoulder with a devious grin. “Who said anything about escaping...?”

“But... the plane...” she stuttered helplessly. “If you didn't escape, then... what...?”

“Keh, you’re asking the wrong questions...” Hiruma shifted his eyes toward the hostages then back to her, fangs still bared.

“Those men...” Suzuna’s brow knit together as she puzzled through the clues. “They were on the Sora Air flight with you, weren't they?”

Hiruma's grin stretched wider. “That's better.”

“Stop with the theatrics, trash.” Agon growled. “What happened to that plane?”

“Kehkehkeh!” Hiruma stepped closer, and leaned in until his face was only inches from them. He locked Agon’s eyes with a piercing stare and an all-knowing smile. “It was hijacked.”

Agon's eyes flashed and he grabbed at the neck of Hiruma's cloak, despite his wrists bound together with zip-ties. “You psycho piece of trash!!”

Hiruma looked more than a little amused, even with Agon's face shoved angrily against his. Suzuna glanced between them anxiously, trying to make sense of their reactions. “Wait, wait... what?!”

“A business meeting in fucking Militaria? No one questioned that, did they?” Agon rolled his eyes as he pushed the other man back, releasing his clothes. It was probably a bad idea to damage the most likely interlocutor they had with their captors. “Fucking incredible...”

“Agonne..?!” Suzuna turned to him.

“Ask him, babe.” As the word slipped out, he noticed Hiruma's eyes light up with all his mischief. The bastard probably thought he had picked up on some secret blackmail. Well, he had some disappointment in store. “Ask him what he was doing there.”

“What...?” she glanced at Hiruma, who was waiting in gleeful anticipation. She took a breath. “You-nii... Why were you on that plane?”

This time he turned his grin on her. “Because I could fly it. Kehkehkeh!!”

Suzuna's entire body seemed to register the implication of this. She grew uncharacteristically still. “You planned it all.”

The mastermind, of course, was unabashed. “Kehkehkeh!”

“But why?!” Her energy bubbled up again quickly, maybe fueled by that crazy laugh.

“You know why,” Agon reminded her. “We heard them talking.”

“The yakuza were trafficking kids, the ones from the orphanage,” her voice was filled with awe and admiration, “So you took a plane full of yakuza hostage to get them back?”

“Keh, well I didn't need all of them. Just that one.” Hiruma nodded toward one man in the group of thugs who stood with a little more dignity than the others, and who stared at Hiruma with slightly more dangerous eyes. “His brother is in the upper echelons, but his lover is even higher up. They would never let him be sacrificed. They would make the exchange.” Hiruma’s smile had reduced to a thin line. “That was the plan.”

Agon was watching him carefully, decoding him. “But they didn't have the brats you asked for.”

Hiruma shrugged. “I tracked them down, eventually.” He threw in another confident smirk, but Agon wasn't convinced.

“But... then what about Zak?” Suzuna asked.

Hiruma paused a moment. “That wasn't part of the plan.” He turned from them and continued on his way toward the helicopter furthest from them.

“Don't walk away, trash! Tell those bastards to untie us—!” Agon snarled, but the look in Suzuna’s eyes cut him short as Hiruma passed the fire and the camp where the dog crate lay empty. He climbed into the hold of the chopper, with medical personnel hunched over a stretcher inside, and leaned beside them, acting irrationally casual considering it was his son laying there, drugged and probably half-starved. The medics said something. Hiruma barely nodded in response. Then the helicopter door slid shut and it rose up until it was only a patch of darkness in the starry sky.

“Well,” Agon scoffed, furious to be left behind with a bunch of criminals and goats, “I guess he’s alive. Hope you’re happy.”

Suzuna was staring up at the sky with teary eyes. “I hope Zak is okay.”

“He'll be fine,” Agon said.

“How do you know?”

“Well, he's the brat of that trash who apparently can’t be killed, isn't he.”

Suzuna smiled up at him through her wet lashes. “Agonne...”

The military men were ignoring them, busy arranging the yakuza captives in the remaining helicopter. The herd of goats pushed against his legs, searching for something edible but finding only the fabric of his pants. “What?”

“Yes.”

His pulse danced, but he played cool. “‘Yes’, what?”

“Yes, I want all the good things you are capable of, as long as you live.” Her eyes echoed her words.

For a full second he couldn't move, then flashed a confident smirk. “It's all yours, Shortie.”

They kissed under a billion stars.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if Militaria is everything you envisioned it would be! I imagined it probably had a very industrialized urban core, but also a lot of hinterland, but who knows! 
> 
> Also, I almost tagged Kaepernick in the characters tags, but my friends: THERE IS NFL FANFICTION ON AO3! Think about this...! They are not fictional characters!


	8. Parachutes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI : There is a section with adult content in the middle of this chapter. If you would like to skip it, simply scroll to the next section break (~*~) if things move out of your level of comfort or interest.

Sena tried to remember the last time he had set foot on the Deimon High athletic grounds. He had done a few special events at the school from time to time after he had gone pro, but it had been a few years now. For the other Deimon alumni, Kurita and Musashi, Monta and the others who had probably never had a reason to go back, he wondered how this impromptu reunion felt. The guys from the other teams probably had no idea of the significance of that wide open space and that patch of sky. Suzuna had gathered them together without warning in a whirlwind of energy, which is how they found themselves loitering at his old high school, but Sena had no idea what to expect.

It had been nearly four days since Zak had gone missing, and Sena hadn't seen Suzuna once in that time. She had not even responded to his messages when he had asked if she wanted to help put up posters or join the community sweeps of the neighborhood, knocking on doors and searching parks and alleys. Then suddenly she appeared, giving directions but little explanation, Agon accompanying her wordlessly like a powerful shadow.

This gathering on the athletic grounds was also the first time Mamori had left her house since the day after the festival. Sena had never seen her like this. The Mamori he knew had always stood up after a tragedy, and he he had expected she would blaze ahead to lead the search efforts, but over the days that followed she barely spoke. At first she was able to give them directions, when he and Panther had gone over to see how the could help, but periodically she would fall into a distant stare, and would retreat to her room for hours at a time.

Sena had struggled to fill the gap Mamori's absence had created, wishing he were more organised and more resourceful than he was. He had only been coordinating the search efforts for a few days but he was thankful for support from his former teammates. Many of those who lent a hand didn't know Mamori well and had never even met Zak, but had been happy to do whatever they could to help. Panther managed to tag along with Yume, thankfully, becoming her de facto chaperone without the girl realizing. She never would have tolerated mandatory surveillance or being trapped indoors, but Sena couldn't imagine what Mamori would do if anything happened to Yume.

Each night when they were back from searching, Panther would commandeer Sena’s laptop to watch American news. Football news, specifically, even though the regular season hadn’t even started yet.

“I can't even...” Panther breathed, transfixed by the screen.

At first Sena had thought the player must have been injured and unable to stand. This was the only possible explanation for why a person would sit during the national anthem, in Japan at least, and from his years in America he sensed there was as much fervor around respect for the nation there. But the man wasn't injured. The deliberate act of defiance caused the entire country to irrupt. Debate raged around the controversy. Spectators booed the quarterback before every pass.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color,” the man in the number seven jersey told reporters. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."1

This was not a figure of speech, Panther explained. In America, police shot and killed Black people— and others— at disturbingly high rates with little to justify the use of force, let alone lethal force. The community mourned and demanded justice, but rarely did the person who pulled the trigger face any consequences for their actions. This had been going on for years, but things never seemed to improve, despite inquiries and court appeals. In fact, the situation seemed to be getting worse.

“It's real... so real, so unjust. But what can a person do?” Panther said, his eyes still captivated by the screen. “That's what I always told myself...”

During this time, Sena often caught Panther looking distracted, whenever there was a quiet moment. But here, on the athletic grounds, he was alert and present, even though the only thing for them to do was wait. Sena had been relieved when he noticed his friend had positioned himself a short distance from Mamori, just close enough that a person with lightning speed legs could catch her from falling, if all those days without sleep were to finally catch up with her. Mamori stood, half-dazed, with her arms wrapped around Yume's shoulders protectively. Sena could feel Zak's absence like a blade against his heart, the same feeling he thought he could read in Mamori's posture.

At the back of the group, Suzuna was watching them all and smiling like she had an exciting surprise. It would be good, then, whatever it was she had brought them there for. He knew he could trust Suzuna, but she could get excited about the oddest things. Still, everyone needed something good right about then, and just about anything would do. Seeing who she had gathered, he hoped... but it was too hard to even hope for things anymore.

The insistent winds that announced the still-distant typhoon pulled at their hair and clothes as the sun sank lower in the sky. In the distance was a sound the Deimon alumni knew so intimately from high school: a jet engine rumbling and echoing so it was unclear which direction it was coming from. The school must have been in a flight path, Sena only realized then, with the airport just over there somewhere. That would explain why there always seemed to be a plane in the sky whenever he had gazed out the classroom window in a daydream, or whenever he had followed the arc of a football in the air.

The sound of the plane grew to a rumble, abnormally loud, rattling the windows of the school and the siding on the Takekura Inc truck parked at the edge of the grounds. Their eyes turned to the sky, half expecting to see a plane plummeting to the earth. Finally a jet emerged from behind the school building and passed deafeningly low overhead, but luckily its trajectory was not descending.

“Military,” Kuroki remarked offhandedly.

Sena was impressed with his knowledge until Toganou countered, “Obviously, dumb-ass!”

As the three of them began arguing about fighter jet models, Sena noticed a new gleam in Suzuna’s eyes, a little brighter and prouder. Before he turned back to follow her gaze, trained on the plane above, he caught a glimpse of her fingers slipping between Agon's, which curled to envelop them. Sena remembered the scene he had interrupted at the festival, which had seemed so incomprehensible at the time, and he found himself smiling.

But a collective gasp ripped him from that odd, precious thought. The underbelly of the jet had opened, and shapes toppled out, tiny at first before the billowing parachutes deployed, and they swirled to the earth dramatically at the mercy of the winds. The angle of the setting sun made it impossible to make out their identities, but Sena knew. It had to be. There was only one person it could be— But then again, there were five parachutes falling from the sky, not one. He waited, heart in his throat, lungs empty and then suddenly full. Above the sound of the receding jet rose the cackling laughter they had all been craving.

“Kehkehkeh!”

The lean man fell fastest, loaded as he was with artillery. He was still metres from touching down when he pressed the release on the parachute and stepped out of the air onto the ground effortlessly with his cocksure grin, like a mythical creature that walked between worlds. His hair was nearly as long as it had been in high school, with long black roots at the base of the frosted spikes that measured the length his absence. Hiruma drank in their astonished expressions and his laughter swelled, a pair of semiautomatic weapons swinging up effortlessly from where they had hung just behind his arms and exploded in a barrage of gunfire in the sky.

Yume had already broken free of her mother's arms and was bounding across the grounds, herself more a thing of the air than the earth, collapsing the space between herself and her father until there was nothing left. Arms strangling his chest, she buried her face in his utility vest. Hiruma touched a hand to her hair, then, surprised and a little displeased, drew it from the top of her head to just below his collarbone as a measure. "Hey, Monster, who gave you permission to get this tall...?"

That tender moment was interrupted by an attack of former Devil Bats and the others, half of them aiming a boot at his rear, the other half piling on him in a crushing hug that pinned him to the ground— aside from the usual stoic outliers, of course, who watched from the sidelines with bemused smiles. When the mob finally retreated, Yume was still clinging to him. The atmosphere between everyone on the athletic grounds was full of laughter and happy tears.

Except for one. Mamori stood, carved from stone, as the parachutes fluttered to earth around them. Hiruma turned to stand face-to-face with her, waiting with an expectant grin. Her silence spread to the others. The perfect joy Sena thought had finally arrived suddenly seemed uncertain.

For a moment Mamori only glared at him. It felt as though she had spoken volumes before she finally opened her mouth. “Hiruma,” she said, her cold voice only barely masked the fury bubbling beneath it. “Did you fake your own death?”

“Tch...” Hiruma seemed to be preparing a witty reply.

“You knew...” At first it was tentative, as she tried to decipher his expression. Then it was an accusation, exploding from her: “ _You knew_!!”

“It was the only way.”

“You knew and you didn't tell me!”

“It took longer than expected.” It was an explanation, and an excuse, but it was too confident.

“All the sleep I've lost over the last six months! Imagining all the terrible things that must have happened to you! Worried sick! Having nothing to tell your _heartbroken_ children!”

“It was the only way to keep you safe,” he replied. “The fucking gangsters would have gone after you to get to me.”

“Safe?” Mamori repeated. “Where is our son, Youichi?!”

Hiruma waved away her concerns. “He's around here somewhere.”

Amid the oceans of parachute fabric that had puddled on the athletic grounds, a shape pushed its way out and ran toward her.

“Mama!” Zak nearly tripped into her arms in his rush to meet her.

“Zakari!” she swallowed his name in a gasp of astonishment and relief. “Oh, thank goodness! Are you hurt?!”

Zak shook his head, preferring to bury his face against her as tears sprung up in his eyes. Mamori pressed her hands to his face, his hair, his shoulders and chest, even patting his legs to ensure he was all there, in one piece, and more than a figment of her imagination. “Thank goodness, thank goodness...” Finally satisfied that it was really her son, she smothered the boy against her and turned a powerful glare at Hiruma, one that said, You had better have a very good explanation for this.

Hiruma replied to her look with a smug remark. “I thought you'd be a little more grateful after everything I risked to expand our family...”

For an instant Mamori's combative expression gave way to wary confusion. “Expand...?”

From the grounded parachutes, as if on cue, another small figure emerged, and another, until three children were running toward her. “Mamori-sensei!”

“Hey, remember what we talked about??” Hiruma reminded them.

“Mama-mori!” the same voices repeated, by that point close enough it was impossible to mistake them for anyone other than the missing orphans.

“Kaito-kun...? Hina-chan... Touji-kun...! Thank goodness...” Mamori's eyes were wide and welling with tears. The two younger ones latched onto her sides and she did her best to embrace both of them while still holding on to Zak. The other, Kaito, older by only a few months but noticeably taller, hung back. Mamori reached out to him and took his fingers in lieu of an embrace. “Thank goodness you’re safe.”

“You’re going to keep us, right?” the boy whispered.

Mamori gave him a pitying look, like her heart was spilling over with sadness, then turned to Hiruma. “We can't possibly...” she breathed.

“Hey, I didn't risk my life on the other side of the world to save these kids just so they could get sent back to that damn orphanage. They’re mine now.”

“But...”

“I thought you loved these kids!”

“Of course I do!” her voice cracked, “But we don't have enough room—”

“—I happen to be a partner in a construction company.”

“Hiruma, how—”

“Do you really want to send them back there?” Hiruma asked.

The orphan kids watched as the discussion unfolded with terrified eyes.

“Of course not! Of course not.” Mamori replied. “Of course you can stay, children. You can come home with us, as long as you want to be part of our family. All of you.”

The collective embrace redoubled in strength. Kaito moved closer and leaned against the other children so she could put an arm around his shoulders, too. Hiruma looked on with a pleased smirk.

Suzuna dashed past Sena, Monta and the HaHa brothers and tagged them to help her gather up the parachutes. By the time they were finished packing up, most of the others had headed back to their vehicles, not wanting to further impose on the family reunion. In the meantime, Mamori had excavated her cellphone from her bag and made a series of phone calls from her position at the centre of the pile of children. First to the police, then the orphanage, and finally to her mother, to let her know to prepare for additional mouths at dinner.

These practicalities out of the way, Mamori’s gaze had drifted back to contemplating Hiruma, but the children were wilting under powerful yawns. Mamori looked at Panther and was about to open her mouth to speak, but suddenly stopped mid-motion and turned instead to Sena. “Sena, could you take the children to the car? Hiruma and I need to speak alone.”

Hiruma’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, apparently we do.”

“I'm staying!” Yume said.

“Go with the others, please.” Mamori replied.

Yume hugged Hiruma tighter. “I'm not letting you out of my sight!!”

“So watch through the window,” Hiruma loosened her arms and slowly pushed her away. “C’mon, go.”

Yume dragged her feet all the way to the car. After the children were taken care of, Suzuna pulled Sena and Panther to join her in Agon’s car, but they, too, watched from the window. Mamori's glare had barely softened.

“I don't get it,” Suzuna sighed from the front seat. “I thought Mamo-nee would be over-the-top happy!”

Sena's hands felt numb, both thrilled and stunned with disbelief. Hiruma was alive. Why had he doubted him?

“Not sure how you can act so surprised,” Agon replied. “Arguing has always been their MO. And the trash has never done anything half this crazy before.”

“Yeah, but... Aren't they going to kiss?” Suzuna pouted, her nose nearly pressed against the window. Beside Sena in the back seat, Panther had his eyes closed. Outside, the reunited pair stood facing one another in a familiar stance of confrontation, but from inside the car they couldn't hear what they were saying.

~*~

“Aren't you going to thank me?” Hiruma asked.

“Thank you!?!”

“Those kids were kidnapped and fucking trafficked to three different countries and I brought them home.”

Mamori covered her eyes with her fists to keep from falling apart. “You should have told me.”

“I said already, I couldn't.”

“You should have told me!”

“The best way to keep a secret is for no one to know.”

“I thought we were a team, Youichi! We could have worked together!” The shrill edge in her voice was so raw he didn't reply. “Why didn't you just let me know you were safe?”

“I was a little off the grid,” he shrugged.

“Six months. Your army friends must have known. They could have passed on the message, just some well-disguised hint. I would have had something to go off of.”

“That's not how they operate.”

“You could have left something behind!”

“Too risky, leaving evidence. I couldn't tell anyone else.”

“Anyone _else_?” Mamori's eyes lit at the word. “Who knew? Who did you tell?”

Hiruma only ground his teeth.

“Hiruma!! Tell me!”

“...Tch...”

“...Kurita.” She answered her own question. “Kurita knew, didn't he?”

“He wouldn't have been able to deal.” Hiruma’s voice was quiet. “Who knows what the fat ass would have done...”

Mamori was staring at the ground, processing what she had heard. Her eyes gleamed bright and wet.

“If anything happened, he was supposed—”

“Goodbye, Youichi.” Mamori gave him one last glare before turning toward the car.

“Hey, this hasn't exactly been easy for me either,” he called after her.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” she said without looking back.

“Don't be like that...”

Suddenly Mamori turned on her heel, facing him angrily.

“Were you trapped under the fuselage of a burning plane? With your legs crushed under the weight of it, so that after you amputated your own limbs with whatever shard of shrapnel had fallen within reach, you had to drag yourself to safety with only the strength that remained in your arms?” she asked. “Were you taken hostage by a local rebel faction and exchanged for weapons with the nearest military regime, only to be held in a secret prison and neglected basic necessities like food, water, warmth, and medical attention and then forgotten there, suffering of pulmonary infection while slowly being eaten alive by rats?”

If he had a response, he had no time to answer.

“Or maybe you were a prisoner of someone more interested in you,” Mamori continued, “and instead of neglect you were given every attention, every incentive or coercion or method of torture to get you to talk. Or were you hauled off to a work camp? Sent down to the mines like a disposable machine, choking on toxic dust, beaten and starved into submission? Hiruma Youichi. Tell me. What did you go through? Which of my nightmares was true?”

Hiruma looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time.

“Well??” she insisted impatiently, but still he said nothing. “Or were you off playing shepherd and sniper and spy?” Her accusing eyes cut along with each furious word.

His sustained silence may have been the first evidence that he was actually listening, and this possibility changed the timbre of her voice so that it finally wavered, threatened by tears.

“You should have let me know. Given me something. Let me help. I was so afraid for so long and then Zak...” and the anger in her tone became secondary to her sobs, “...and then Zak! I was so afraid and there was nothing I could do, and then you just fall out of the sky like nothing happened!!”

Seeing her angry usually delighted him because she got upset about the most ridiculous crap, but when it came to important things, she always kept her head. Tears might well up, because she felt every pain like her own, but seeing her openly cry was rare. He reached out to put an arm around her but she moved away, turning again toward the car.

This was too much.

“And you,” he called after her, “Don’t you have something to tell me?

“...Such as...?”

“Did something happen between you?”

“Between me...?”

“Don't act so stupid, you know who I mean.”

Mamori stopped with her fingers on the door handle. “How...?”

“The way you looked at him.”

“From one look, you can tell..?”

“Yes! Of course, from one look! I know you better than anyone and I know your looks better than anyone and if you thought you could hide something like that from me you are not half as smart as I give you credit for! What happened between you?”

Mamori closed her eyes, unsure how to answer, but finally said, “I kissed him.”

“You thought I was dead and moved on before my body was even cold, huh?”

She shook her head, her still red-trimmed eyes fixed on the ground. “It would have been easier, to believe you were dead. But I couldn't. There was no proof. And I couldn't... bear... to imagine you coming back to find out I had lost faith in you.”

“So you faithfully believed I was alive while you had your tongue down someone else's throat?”

“My tongue!? Was not— And it is none of your business!”

“How is it not my business!?”

“I never promised anything....”

Hiruma eyes darkened. “Like hell you didn't.”

“We never... promised... not to see other people.”

He could only respond with a glower.

“Youichi...”

“You're mine! I'm yours!” he exploded. “What are you talking about, promises? No one else has ever existed!”

Mamori opened her mouth and then closed it again, with a dumbfounded expression.

“Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Why the fuck do you look so surprised!? Where have you been the last fifteen years! I have been busy only giving a fuck about you!!”

“...But... then why...” Mamori struggled to put the pieces together in her mind.

“Why didn't we get married? Because you never asked! Did you think I was going to offer?”

“No... but...”

“You know I think marriage is a fucking scam, but if that's what you need to remember who I am to you then fuck, whatever, I can handle it. You never asked so I figured you had seen it for the charade it is. Promises!” He spat the word. “I made so many promises to you and never asked for anything back. Why do you think that is?”

Mamori buried her face in her hands. “I am such an idiot.”

“For once we fucking agree on something! ”

Mamori shook her head, amazed at herself, at her foolishness. “I thought I was being so selfless, not keeping you all to myself...” she tried to explain.

“Are you crazy? Who else? Who else has ever had a chance with me?”

“Just... everyone...” she replied feebly.

“Oh, be careful what you wish for!” His laugh was bitter. “You shouldn't give me any fucking ideas!”

“Fine.” Mamori straightened and held her head a bit higher, a bit haughtily. “Honestly, you disappear without a word and then think you can criticise me for what happened while you were gone? I've been waiting for you to come back for half a year. I have been waiting to tuck my son into his bed for an eternity. I am going home. If you want to continue this discussion you are welcome to come with me.”

“I promised you my life, I promised to stay, I gave you the monsters of your dreams,” he told her across the roof of the car. “You can't stop me from coming home with you.”

“I disagree,” Mamori sighed a frustrated sigh, “but since I already invited you home there is nothing to argue about!”

“That never fucking stopped us before...” Hiruma muttered as he swung the passenger side door open and ducked inside.

There was a heavy silence between them as Mamori drove them home, the back seat crammed tight with more passengers than was technically within the legal limit. The children had dozed off, which was a major factor in the silence, but the adults were also each absorbed in their resentment towards the other. Mamori pretended to be focused on the road, but her expression was still a mix of anger and exhausted sadness. Hiruma, on the other hand, openly watched her every move, from the way she checked the mirror to her grip on the steering wheel. Eventually, he let out a half-laugh. “Keh...”

Mamori didn't look at him, but her face took on an annoyed frown. “What is so funny?”

“Whenever I see you behind the wheel, it reminds me of the Death March...” he said.

She sighed. He wanted her to ask, but she did so grudgingly. “What about it?”

“You up in the cab of that truck, in that wicked heat, steering a monster that was going nowhere fast. Eh, well... going somewhere, very very slowly.”

“Hhmm...” She wondered why he was going on about that old thing.

“The Death March was when I fell in love with you.”

She snuck a startled glance at him. He sounded like he was just stating facts, but there was the slightest sentimental trace in his voice.

“I’d been falling for a while I guess, but that was when I realized what it was. As much as a kid can understand about it, anyway.”

Mamori didn't reply. She still couldn't imagine a teenage Hiruma being in love, even though she always liked to think that she could read him. She remembered the slow burn of every day watching that maniac being incredible, wearing himself thin, creating the impossible from nothing, stealing her heart so expertly it was months before she noticed it was missing...

“You’re right, anyway.” Hiruma conceded.

“About what?” she replied, suspicious of a trap but too exhausted to avoid it.

“I should have told you.”

This was not what she had expected, and she was speechless at the admission.

“I should have gotten you in on the operation. It wasn't supposed to take so long. Two months, tops, that was the plan. Fuckin' military brats think they are experts. If it had been you... Tch!! I’d've been back before the spring tournament, if I had my own people, my clueless civilians, with you at the helm... We would have shown them how it's done.”

She recovered from her shock enough for a dry response. “It was just a contract, then?”

“Not _just_ a contract, obviously. I crafted it. The intelligence, the contacts, everything. But to slip over the borders that needed to be crossed and break all the laws that needed to be broken without starting any wars... There were terms.”

“That's thoughtful of you, not wanting to start a war,” she noted, too softly for any sarcasm her voice may have held to be detected.

Hiruma pretended to look out the window but it was her reflection he watched with a grin. “It wasn't very fun without you.”

“But you managed, somehow. You saved Kaito and the others... Youichi, really, it was so dangerous. I can't even think about it...” Mamori forced herself to keep her eyes open and on the road ahead. “All the things that might have gone wrong... all the things that might have happened...”

“Well, if I didn't get them back I wouldn't be able to show my face here again,” Hiruma smirked.

“Unlike if it had been a PR stunt,” she reminded him sternly. There was relief in her voice that he seemed to find amusing.

“If...? Kehkehkeh.”

“Youichi, no...”

“Well, how were the numbers, anyway? Did we blow out targets out of the water or not?”

“For goodness sake, if that was in any way part of your plan, it's better for you if I don't know about it!!”

Hiruma cackled and stared out the window again. “The fucking wildcat, though... that wasn't part of the plan.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was supposed to be the fucking midget.”

“What are you talking about? Sena was supposed to do what, exactly?”

“Take care of the team. And take care of you. He owed you that much, after you holding his hand all those years. If anything happened, he would be the one to step up.”

“Ha...” The laugh escaped her and faded into a sigh.

This time Hiruma frowned. “What's so funny?”

“You pretend like you know people so well... Sena? Sena could barely take care of himself after you went missing. He never recovered.”

“Tch...”

“That can't surprise you, Youichi...”

Hiruma shrugged off her reality check. “Anyway. I never dreamed Patrick fucking Spencer would steal my family.”

“Youichi.”

“You don't understand who this guy is to me.”

She gave him a meaningful look. “He's a good man.”

“You think I don't know that?!” Hiruma exclaimed. “I am perfectly aware just how much he deserves you, how much you two deserve each other! I want him to have someone like you, but not you. Not you. Fucking genius manager Mama-mori. Don't forget: I'm yours.”

“Shh, please. You'll wake them.” Mamori glanced at the back seat where the children were still dozing. After another block or two of driving she said quietly, “I haven't forgotten, my reckless and heartless and fantastic and cruel Hiruma Youichi.”

“But...?”

Mamori could only shake her head hopelessly as she navigated a turn. Hiruma studied her, her face and the tense line from her wrists to her shoulders through her elbows.

“You love him.”

She paused a moment before replying. “Yes.”

Hiruma ground his teeth and watched the lights of the street flash past. When she had pulled into their driveway he turned back to her. “So, what now?”

She didn't reply. He shifted in his seat. “Tch...”

“Youichi...” Mamori sighed as she put the car into park. She looked at the children in the backseat. “How is it you seem to think I can love five children, but somehow I’m not able to love two men at the same time?”

She barely glanced at him before cutting the ignition and getting out of the car, opening the back door to unload the kids. Without the purr of the engine, they were awakening, groggy with sleep. Mamori picked up the still-dozing Hinako to carry her inside and instructed Yume to lead the two boys. Hiruma unbuckled Zak from the backseat and picked him up, too, although the boy was only half asleep and could probably walk on his own.

Hiruma had just shut the car door when he caught a shape in the corner of his eye. Panther was perched on the cinder block fence, watching.

“Fucking wildcat.”

“Hey Sharky.” Panther dropped to the ground and approached him. In Hiruma’s arms, Zak stirred and opened his eyes at his voice.

“Panther?”

“Hey little dude.” Panther ruffled his hair, but more gently than usual. “We were all worried about you. You okay?”

Zak nodded and blinked sleepily.

“You were real brave, on your own all that time.”

“I don't remember that. I don't remember very many things, except being scared. I was really scared.”

“We were scared, too,” Panther told him. “Your mama was more scared than anybody.”

They could hear Mamori calling Zak’s name, slightly panicked, before she appeared at the entrance. She saw Panther and Hiruma facing one another and suddenly fell silent.

“Mama...” Zak’s eyes grew wide and he reached out toward her. Hiruma set him on the ground, and the boy ran to the step and into her embrace. She cast only a single glance back before disappearing inside with Zak in her arms.

“It's been a while, bro.” Panther approached Hiruma, knocking a shoulder against his, then pressed one hand against his ribs. They had perfected this greeting in the Armadillos, so casual it might have looked like they knocked shoulders accidentally while passing one another too close. Especially with shoulder pads, it was easy to make it seem like a careless mistake, the hand against the side just a reaction to push the other man away. Probably no one else made the connection between the spot the hand landed and the disturbing scars that they had all seen in the showers, but subconsciously that must have been how it began. Panther waited for Hiruma to respond, but that night he did not return the gesture. He only stared past the other man's shoulder with a cold expression.

Panther smiled at him, even though he didn't feel like smiling. “You have this way of walking through hell and coming out the other side looking unscathed on the outside. But how are you, really?”

When Hiruma said nothing, Panther clamped his other hand against his back, a half-embrace that might have been the closest approximation to hugging Hiruma Youichi that a mortal might dare.

“It's hard to look at you right now,” Hiruma said finally through clenched teeth.

“Why’s that?” Panther asked patiently.

“Just tell me.” Hiruma didn't shrug him off, but his voice was dangerously measured. “Did you fuck her?”

Panther was too stunned to reply straight away. “Bro, I thought you knew me better than that...”

“Answer.”

“No. What put ideas like that in your head?”

“You kissed.”

Panther pressed his eyes shut in frustration. “Agh...”

“Are you going to deny it?”

“That kiss... was not what you think.”

“Then what the fuck was it?”

“I had no chance with her, as long as there was a chance you were alive,” he explained, even though Hiruma would never believe that was what the kiss meant. “She never took her eyes off the sky, from the time your plane disappeared.”

“She's in love with you.”

“What?” Panther looked at him with confusion. “Did she say that?”

Hiruma narrowed his eyes at the reaction. “So you didn't fuck her?”

“Come on, you know I would never cross you.”

“Did you think about it? Fantasize?”

“Seriously, why are you doing this?”

“I’ve seen you look at each other! She's in love with you and you're in love with her. How is that not betraying me?”

“We were just a couple of half-broken people trying to get through each day.” It was true, until it had grown into something else. Something that never existed, anyway, except in the flash of a kiss. “We leaned on each other, her and me and the kids, Sena and the team...”

“Ah, the team. Tch...” The sound filtered through grated teeth from a tense, angry jaw.

“ ‘Tch’, what?” Panther replied, scolding him with a laugh. “Don't 'tch’, I had a great time, you don't owe me anything. We're even. All good.”

“Keh...” Hiruma leaned his weight into his shoulder, pressing against Panther’s, and let a hand rest against the other man's side.

Panther smiled to himself and relaxed a little. “How are you, though? Six months... it's a long time. You make it through okay?”

Hiruma was quiet a moment, as though being reminded of that time had pulled him into the past like an undertow. “The hunt was good,” he said finally. “The waiting was hard.”

Panther put his hand around his friend's shoulder again, knowing everything unsaid must have been much harder if Hiruma was willing to admit that much. He thought Hiruma’s body felt less tense, at least, if only ever so slightly. When he glanced up at his face, Hiruma was still staring at the house.

“What would you have done, if I had died?” Hiruma ask after a long silence, except for the wind between the houses and the ornamental garden pines.

“You mean, if I saw your body put into the ground or reduced to ash or something?” Panther joked with a half-grin.

“Yeah.”

“I dunno. If you were dead, would you haunt the person who offered themself to your widow?”

Hiruma studied his friend’s face. “So, you would have offered?”

“Well, I'm not sure I'm brave enough to handle being haunted by you. You’re scary enough when you're alive.”

“Kehkehkeh!” Hiruma laughed. “Then you sure as hell aren't brave enough to be married to her!”

~*~

All five children had taken their baths and their shouts were filtering up from the spare room downstairs even though they should have been calming down for bed when Mamori flicked on the light. Hiruma blinked. He hadn't realized his eyes had been open as he had been laying there in the dark.

Mamori looked a bit startled to see him stretched out on the bed still fully dressed, but she brushed it off easily. "The bath is going to get cold," she said, crossing the room without giving him another glance.

He didn't move. He had waited so long to be this comfortable again, to just lay back without anything to worry about... but the way she was acting like she hadn't forgiven him was starting to make him worry. He had apologized, or close enough. He had admitted she was right. What more could she want? Hiruma watched her movements, partly for clues, and partly because that was another thing he had waited for.

"We need more toothbrushes," she informed him as she returned her hairbrush and comb to the dresser. The comb, he knew, was for the Monster and her untameable hair. "We should have bought some on the way home. The typhoon will be here tomorrow."

"Keh, some places out there don't have toothbrushes at all," he said. "People just chew on sticks."

The statement was supposed to remind her that a lack of toothbrushes wasn't the end of the world, but it only made her more hostile. "These children are not going to chew on sticks! Certainly not if there is any hope for the adoption papers to go through."

"Tch. They'll go through."

His own anger had faded, ever since he had seen the look of disbelief on the fucking wildcat's face when he had told him Mamori was in love with him. Anyway, could he blame her for falling for him? He might have married that fine example of a man himself if it wouldn't have gotten them both murdered in that homophobic city. Panther was gold: pure charm and pure of heart, and only a complete idiot wouldn’t fall in love with him. He couldn't hold that against her. But that did not solve his problem of whatever it was she was holding against him.

"Do you have some brilliant plan for how that is going to happen?" she replied. "With our basement doubling as a weapons bunker? Have you thought how that will look to social services?"

Hiruma let out a breath. Her argument had left the realm of rational thought, at least in matters that concerned him. He had always taken care of things like that before; he had his ways of managing the blurred line between legal and illegal that he lived to dance between. She knew this and had always trusted him with it, but now she was throwing these doubts in his face. It was bad.

"If you aren't going to take a bath then I will." She took the clip from her hair and placed it on the dresser, quite properly, as though her decision was a perfect illustration of all the ways that she was right and he was wrong. He watched her open the closet and reach up to pull a towel or a bathrobe or something like that from the top shelf. She moved in three dimensions, which was somehow more unreal than his memories and dreams. He was home and she was real, but it was not how he had imagined it would be.

"Just... don't..." he began.

She paused, giving him a flat stare. "The water will get cold."

"Wait..." He pushed himself to sit up. He still didn't have a plan of how to fix this, but it had to be fixed and he couldn't risk waiting. "...just wait a fucking minute and let's deal with this."

She held her impatient look a moment, then moved to leave as if she hadn't heard him. He reached out after her to grab her wrist, but she slipped through his fingers and his hand caught on the towel instead. Only then did she turn back with a frown to try to snatch it away from him, but he held fast. As she pulled at the towel he brought it in close enough to take her wrists to keep her from running off. He levelled his eyes to hers, hoping to find a clue. If he was lucky, she would just tell him what the fucking problem was and they could work from there.

Instead, she twisted free. There was no way a bath was so damn important. He sprung after her, reaching for her again, but this time with an arm across her chest and the other around her waist.

“What is it?” he asked as he held her back. It wasn't like her to run instead of fighting him face-to-face, all indignant and self-righteous.

She didn't reply. Her hair half covered his face so he couldn't see her expression, but she didn't even move in response. It was a special kind of angry, if she wasn't going to lay his faults out in front of him.

“I did what I had to do, alright?” he told her hair. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about everything I should have done differently. I'd be pissed at me too, if I were you. But somehow I fucking made it back alive without getting the kids killed, either. I made mistakes, yeah, but I saw an opening and I sure as hell couldn't do nothing. You know that.”

He could feel her chest rise and fall slightly under his arm with each breath. He could barely hear her reply. “I know.”

He had only meant to make her stay and face whatever it was that was standing between them, but with his face buried in her hair like this, her scent filling his senses did more to make him forget why he had stopped her than feeling her curves against him. But, fuck, her curves were against him. Her breasts pressed under his arm and the dip of her waist flared out in a soft curve to her hip where he held her against him.

"It has been too long," he murmured, tightening his grip. If he moved his hands a little further there were even more curves and still every breath was filled with her.

Mamori stood still, not resisting as she had, but not responding as he would expect. She stared at the wall. "Don't do something you will regret, Youichi..."

The words froze his heart, and something filled his veins like liquid panic. He released his arms immediately but he did not move away. It was conceivable, of course, that she might care for someone else, but not at his expense. He had been confident that whatever infatuation there had been would fade away now that he was back, more difficult to ignore than a memory or a ghost. He shifted in front of her, barely a hair’s width from her, resisting all the forces inside him intent on devouring her and focusing instead on finding a way to make her remember that he was the one she needed.

"You’re angry with me, fine." He spoke into her neck, hoping his breath fell on that spot that made her weak. "Some part of you doesn't hate me. Forget the rest of it for now..."

"I don't hate you..." she whispered.

"So, what’s the problem?" He watched every flick of her eyelashes, every twitch in her muscles and skin. After so many years of studying her, there should be no need for her to reply. But he couldn't read her, and his anxiety grew.

She closed her eyes as if to block out his gaze and concentrate on her answer. Her eyebrows creased. "I'm just confused, right now."

"Confused. What is there to be confused about?" he asked, because he knew and he was afraid. There was one single person in the world would could make her doubt that he was the only one who could make her happy, crazy, fulfilled, whatever, and that person had been working his way into her heart over all those months. It was a dangerous situation.

"Youichi..." Her voice was doubtful, unsure how to respond or where to begin. From the angle of her collarbone and the arch of her neck, the way her face was turned slightly away, but inclining toward him, he could tell she was in orbit. There had always existed a gravity between them, and it was still true— she had plenty of time to move away, but her body was still alongside his, matched hips and chest and thighs.

His hands hovered in the air, waiting. Not touching her was unbelievable with all of her right there in front of him, in real life, within reach, but he would not give her anything to hold against him, no matter how sure he was about what she wanted. She had to move first. She had to remember.

“I know it doesn't make sense...” she said. He sensed a millimeter shift of her lips toward him and another millimeter shift of her chin away. She was practical. Reasonable. She would not throw away everything they had built up over years and years for someone she had just met. One more millimeter, then another. He could wait.

No, screw that, he wanted her breath on his mouth and her hands in his hair and her legs against him at every angle, and he would lose his mind if he had to wait much longer.

“Do you want me to leave?” He took the risk to provoke her.

“No...” Her breath was on his mouth, like a hot dream, and he actually thought he might fucking die if she didn't take him right then, but her gaze filtered through her eyelashes, so strange, so unlike her, a little afraid, a little guilty... ah... was that it? If she couldn't face him because of the kiss that had betrayed him, that was a simple enough problem to solve.

“Hey, I don't care what happened while I was dead,” he told her, tracing a finger along her eyebrow lightly enough that later, if he needed to, he might be able to deny they had touched.

Her eyes turned to his with a new light, finding permission in that absolution, but there was still something reluctant in them. “But... I...”

He willed himself to look patient, nearly snapping under the pressure. “You don't hate me.”

“No.”

“You aren't upset that I'm not dead.”

“No. You're alive...” She reached up to touch his face, tracing her fingers along his jaw as she blinked back tears. “Thank goodness... really...”

“So...?”

She drew back ever so slightly, still hesitating. “I don't know what to do.”

“Whatever. I'm right here and I'm yours. Do what you want with me.” He was beginning to say things he was likely to regret, but he was willing to discard his pride in a gamble to seize the moment. Just a taste, then she would have to remember, but it would all be over if he stole it. “Throw me away when you’re done if you want.”

“I... no...” she gulped, horrified at the image he had painted and pitying him for being able to imagine it. “I couldn't...”

“You can, actually. If I love you, that's my problem. Don't worry yourself over it.”

Her eyes flooded with emotion at the words he so rarely spoke, and he was afraid she was going to break down in tears for real, yet she turned her mouth so close he could practically taste it. “I...”

“You are confused. I know. So kiss me already.”

Whatever force had been holding her back lost its power. Her lips locked to his and she pressed herself against him, fingers clasping his face to keep him from slipping away. She kissed him as if he were something precious that had been lost. She kissed him as if she had been starved. The fire that had taken over his body flared through his senses at the touch of her tongue. Crackling in his spine. Blinding him with the heat. It was worth all the waiting.

He let her push him back a step with the press of her body. Her mouth was still on his, fast and then slow, each breath making him burn. He ran his hands over the length of her, first her face, then over her hair and down her back to her waist, her stomach her hips, her ass, her thighs, as far as he could reach without breaking from her lips. Then he pulled her against him with all his strength. He felt her body move against his own as though she was caught by the same fire, and he desperately tried to hold her tighter. Another step back and they had reached the bed but she stopped them from falling back.

“The door,” she spoke into his lips.

Fuck. The fucking door. “Tch!” he hissed. With an arm under her thighs he hoisted her onto his hips and attempted to backtrack the half-dozen steps— there was no way in hell he was going to let her go after all that waiting, not with the risk she might revisit her earlier reservations. Forgetting his knee, he nearly lost balance and Mamori clung to his shoulders to keep from falling, which only swung him off kilter even more in the opposite direction. He managed to slam the door shut by turning her against it.

“The fucking door is closed,” he informed her, pinning her there with his hips. All he could think about was her thighs around his waist, and how hard and hot he was against that spot between her legs. His mouth was nearest to her neck, so he kissed her there, following the line from her jaw to her shoulder, then down to her collar.

She buried her hands in his hair. Her fingers slipped through his roots more easily than with the fried bleached texture, but they were not any less entangled. She was the only one who was allowed such a gesture, and he had craved it and everything it meant over those months without her as he had stalked between the mountains and the underworld.

That had been a time of waiting, but waiting was over. He put a hand down the collar of her shirt, pulling it down over her shoulder. His fingers dipped into her bra, brushing her nipple and feeling every twitch and arch of her body against his own as he brought his mouth down to her breast. Her hands in his hair contracted, pulling him in closer. Her hips rose against him. He crushed himself against her. She was trying to stay quiet, but she was doing a terrible job and every gasp and moan only made him harder. Soon she guided his face up to hers and looked into his eyes.

She didn't need to speak.

He retreated and set her down at the foot of the bed precisely where they had left off before the door so inopportunely interrupted. With her weight again she pressed against him until she had pushed him back onto the bed, breaking away from his lips just long enough to pull off his shirt. He grabbed hers with a devious grin and used it to pull her close enough to kiss her stomach in a soft line to the waist of her pants. He had unbuttoned them without breaking the progress of his kisses, and slipped both hands under the fabric to push them back, his mouth moving lower and the sway of her hips becoming more involuntary. The taste of her immediately recalled to him all those years of making her feel ways no one else could, making her forget that anything else existed. There was nothing else but him.

He gripped the back of her thighs to keep her from withdrawing from his tongue, burying into all her warmth as she gasped and her body arched. Her moans became deeper, then higher, and then she broke away from his hold to fumble with his pants. He left one hand between her legs, letting his fingers slide into her wetness with every rock of her hips, keeping her going as she worked at the closure. His other hand traced across her skin, the suppleness of her ass making him mad, wanting to pull her onto him already, but the clothing logistics had still not been resolved. Her efforts to remove his pants progressed, and they soon fell to the floor, although her own still tangled around her knees. She kicked them off while he unlatched her bra. Soon enough she was naked above him, her nipples sorely neglected, but she lowered herself onto him, slick and hot and maddeningly wet, and all he could do was lay back and moan every curse in every language that had ever entered his repertoire.

Whenever she took him over like this he could be assured that she wanted every thrust and rise and whimper. Her poise and respectability fell away and she proved she was nearly as crazy as he was, yet she retained that pure quality of hers. The gasp when he entered her was not exaggerated for his benefit, the arch of her back when he moved inside her not part of some performance. Just her body and her breath responding to his, sexy as all fuck.

They had explored one another and perfected this art over so many years, he knew how to find her rhythms and she knew his. By the time she was at the cusp she would be too faint to continue but still not quite there, and that would be his turn to lay her down under him to finish her. He would force himself deeper inside her, searching until he found that spot that would make her cry out, making his senses implode, again and again, and she would rise up to meet him, clinging to him in case he dare pull away without delivering on that promise.

She was his, he was hers.

There was only their sweat and their skin and their heat and their eyes and their breath.

There was no one else.

There was nothing else in the world.

There was nothing to worry about.

Hiruma curled against her side and lay there as the buzz enveloped him, fading slowly. Her arms were around him and she stroked his hair, her fingers grazing against his face lightly with each brush. He considered taking her again but found himself cherishing the peace in a way he never had before. Her lips rested against his forehead like an unending kiss.

After an unknown time had passed, his anxieties must have completely dissolved, and he recovered his usual cheeky confidence. He grinned as he whispered the question in her ear: “Are you still confused?”

Maybe he had been too cocky. What answer had he expected? But he couldn't take it back, even after she replied in a choked whisper to the ceiling:

“You are alive and I love you... but I am still confused.”

~*~

"Come on, just one camera, I promise. At least let us get a couple shots! Maybe a few soundbites..."

"Riko, you can't come here in the middle of the typhoon." Mamori shielded her mouth with a hand to keep from being overheard, fully expecting Hiruma to swoop in at any moment to snatch the phone from her and order a full regiment of camera crews. "It's not safe."

"Believe me, I have done much more dangerous things in my line of work." Riko replied. "Besides, this is a feel-good story, it's exactly what everyone at home wants to see while they are waiting out the storm."

Mamori glanced at the children, who were struggling to focus on the review homework she had dug up. "I don't think the commotion is a good idea."

“It would be bringing hope to the city. The whole country, even!”

Mamori tried to come up with another excuse, but the reporter ploughed ahead. “We're passing by the orphanage to get the headmistress's statement, then we'll be right over!"

"Riko, please...!" Mamori protested as the line went dead.

Mamori peeked out the window again. The rain and wind were impressive. She was thankful that the new semester wouldn't start for a few days; at least the storm would be over and the children would have had a little time to adjust. Her heart felt like breaking, not knowing what they had been through or how they were handling it, but fearing the worst. She said a prayer of thanks again to whatever higher power had delivered them back safely, then checked her watch. That morning she had called to begin the long administrative process for the adoption and had asked for the contact information for a counselling specialist. Their office had not yet opened when she phoned earlier, but it was about time to try again.

Mamori went to the kitchen where she had left the number. Hiruma was there, leaning against the counter and reading something on his phone with a coffee in hand. She couldn't help but remember so many mornings walking in on him like this, holding a newspaper during all those years before everything was on smartphones. They had been avoiding one another all morning, but when she entered he failed to ignore her perfectly, his glance scanning her like an x-ray machine trying to decipher her inner secrets as she crossed to get her notes from the table. Her heart ached again. She could tell from all the calculations behind his eyes that he was searching for a way to sway her decision in his favour, but as much as he relished in coercing his enemies, it brought him no pleasure when it concerned the people he cared about. He would leave her to her own free will, but that did not help her with her internal conflict. For months, all she had wanted was to fall asleep with him in her arms. In her dreams that was all the happiness she could ask for, but instead that night she lay awake.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to him, but it wouldn't be fair to just discard the person who had kept her alive all those months, either. Patrick Spencer. If she had just put away her feelings for him, like she had decided to, there wouldn't be a problem. But then he had stayed beside her when the ground fell out from under her, proving everything she had suspected about who he was and why he was precious to her. Slowly, thoughtfully, persistently, gently, attentively, beautifully, reliably beside her. It was too late. She had lost control of her heart.

She hesitated before Hiruma a moment, searching for something to say to him that would make everything right, then picked up her notepad and left the kitchen without exchanging a word.

Mamori was about to climb the stairs to make the call from the privacy of the bedroom when she heard Yume’s voice from the living room. “Hey, what’s Panther doing outside? Doesn’t he know we’re supposed to stay in?”

Mamori frowned. It wasn't his first typhoon, he should know better. “Maybe he is on his way to the Kobayakawa’s?”

Yume shook her head. “He’s just standing there, by the gate.”

Mamori moved to the window. Through the blinds she could see the American standing just as Yume had said. The wind and rain buffeted against the hood of the raincoat they had bought together at the beginning of the rainy season, but otherwise he didn’t move. He seemed to be waiting for something.

Mamori glanced at her phone. Sure enough, there was a message from Panther asking her to meet him outside. Mamori moved quickly to the front entry to put on her rain boots and jacket. She had just placed her hand on the door handle when she heard a voice behind her.

“Hey...” Hiruma was leaning against door frame to the hall.

Mamori paused and turned toward him.

“Maybe this family has gotten too big,” he said.

Her eyebrows knit together. “What do you mean, too big? This was your idea, remember.”

“I know. That's not the point.”

“We can talk about this when I come back. I won't be long.”

“Just listen,” he replied. “There’s a ton of kids, and we grown-ups are totally outnumbered. Plus, your mom's getting old...” He stared at her a moment, as if to give her time to read his mind, but all she could sense was that this conversation was serious, perhaps too serious to begin while she was running out the door. When she only looked at him in confusion he continued, “Maybe we should bring in another adult, just to make it more fair. What do you think?”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What are you saying...?”

“Ask him,” Hiruma shrugged, with more than a hint of a smile. “I bet the greater family council of monsters would approve his application.”

Mamori’s fingers gripped the handle tighter and she felt her lungs fill with an elated breath. “Ask him... to live with us? Are you sure?”

“Why not?” he replied. “Afterall, our fucking family might even stand a chance of winning the Super Bowl...”

There were a thousand responses jumbled in her heart, but she could only reply with a nod. A lump of affection caught in her throat.

“Better run before he gets lost out there, kehkehkeh!” he teased her, and Mamori turned to face the storm outside. Hiruma was still leaning against the wall, arms folded with a satisfied grin, as the door closed behind her.

Mamori struggled along the entrance path against the wind and rain. “Patrick Spencer, what are you doing out here?” she scolded him when she reached the gate. “The typhoon is here, you should be inside.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to get blown away.”

“But you could be hit by something. It isn’t safe.”

“I had to see you,” he said. He put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He held it out to her over the gate. “Here. We did it.”

It was addressed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration. She slid the contents from the envelope, revealing an American passport with a new addition to one of its pages. A smile broke over her face. “Your visa extension was approved.”

“It’s good for a year. All sixteen Japanese seasons,” he joked.

“You can stay,” she breathed. “You can stay.”

“I can.”

“You are going to stay... right?”

“Mamori...” his voice dropped. “Hiruma is back.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Everything I did, I was filling in for him until he came back... and now he’s back.”

“There is still a place for you here. There are still a hundred pizza places you haven’t tried.”

“I would be in the way.”

“He doesn't replace you.” Mamori insisted. “Just because Hiruma is back, it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

Panther closed his eyes and took a breath. “How... do you feel about me?”

“I am in love with you,” she replied. When he opened his eyes, her eyes were locked on his. “I love you, Patrick Spencer.”

For a moment it looked like he might cry, despite his wide smile, but any actual tears were blinked away. “I’m glad I had a chance to get to know you, Mamori Anezaki. I met you in a dark time, and I hope got to be a little bit of light for you,” he gulped back a breath that was a bit too emotional, “but I can’t compete with the sun.”

“...Patrick...”

“I just wish... I wish I could have known you when you were happy.” He brushed some wet, loose strands of hair from her face. “I love it when you smile.”

“So stay,” she said. “Everyone is safe now, we can all be happy together. The kids would be thrilled. Hiruma...”

“I can’t cross him, understand?”

“Hiruma loves you as much as I do. It’s not a competition. You can stay.”

“Hey, come on, be serious...”

“I’m being serious,” Mamori gripped the cuff of his jacket as if to convince him. “Be part of our family.”

“What..?” A smile crept onto his face and quickly became a grin. He shook his head in disbelief. “Amazing.”

“Yes, it would be amazing,” she beamed back. “So stay. Please.”

“This can't be for real.”

“There is room for you in our home, if you want it, Patrick Spencer. If you want to make a home here.”

“Home...” Panther paused as the wind shifted directions and the rain pelted them from the other side. “Mamori, you knew this all along, from the very first day, you were trying to help me see this...” There was another pause as he struggled to find the words.

She studied his expression, then let her hand fall from his sleeve. “You are going back to America.”

“Yeah...” he looked at the puddles, more like rivers, near his feet, and then turned his face to the rain-filled sky. “I’m done running. That country is my home, despite everything, in spite of every effort to convince me otherwise. The blood of my ancestors built that place. I can’t ignore that. Before, I felt like all I could do was keep my head down, keep out of trouble. I didn't worry about anyone but myself until I made it. So what? I made it, I gave my grandma the good life in the end. But folks keep on getting killed. Maybe I’ve inspired some kids, but what does it matter if someone can just turn around and pull a trigger on them? But there are folks trying to change things, and I can be part of that. I can do something, make a difference somehow, maybe just in a small way... All I know is, I have to try. But I can’t do that work from here... even if the person I love most in this world is here.”

Maybe it was the rain, but her cheeks were streaked wet. “So, you have to go.”

He only nodded, watching her a moment, helpless to comfort her.

“You can't just leave without saying goodbye, to the kids, to everyone,” she told him, trying to hold back the emotion in her voice. “There needs to be a going away party. That is how we do things here, an official send-off, with speeches and everything.”

“I'll do all that. Of course, I wouldn't go without saying goodbye. I'll do it proper.”

“I can organize it,” she offered, but the tears flooded her eyes at the words. “I’ll... make sure...”

“Mamori,” Panther stopped her. “At that party, I won't be able to say goodbye to you the way I want. And I don't want to live to regret it...”

She wiped the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand and took a breath, struggling to compose herself. “Is that why you came? To say goodbye...?”

He didn't reply. Instead he slipped his hands inside the hood of her jacket and caressed her face with his fingertips. Then he leaned across the gate and dipped down to press his lips against hers in an answer to the kiss she had given him at the festival. Just as he moved to part Mamori reached out and kept him close. She looked up into his eyes, wet from rain and heartbreak.

“I love it when you smile, too,” she whispered.

Panther struggled to give her a smile, but the result was more tragic than the kiss.

“Don’t forget me, Mamori Anezaki,” he said as he pulled away.

“Patrick Spencer...” she breathed his name in response, “Be careful in the storm.”

 

// fin //

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1// This is a direct quote from Kaepernick from a news interview in 2016.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading to the end! 
> 
> This was just supposed to be a fun little story to try out some unlikely pairings but then....  
> ....yeah, it got a bit long.
> 
> Obviously there are some major problems with this story. Too many to excuse! I won't even bother to ask for forgiveness except on two points:  
> 1) Human trafficking  
> What happened in this story is like a cartoon, which barely resembles how human trafficking operates in the real world. It is closer to what you might see in exotic animal smuggling than human trafficking. But the motives, economics, and power structures of these two things are very different. Are there wealthy buyers out there who want to keep Japanese kids as pets? I realize this topic could be triggering but it is also so unrealistic and abstract it didn't make sense to put a warning. If you think I should have, I apologise.  
> (Really, I just needed some very very good reason for Hiruma to be missing long enough for Mamori to have some quality time with Panther. A good enough reason that he could come back without being cut out of her life.)
> 
> 2) Panther.  
> First, I am not sure I have any right to write Panther at all, being so personally distant from anything that might resemble his lived experience. But I felt a responsibility to write him, too. He is a Black hero in anime with a lot of potential, but gets trapped in these plotlines that essentialize race. He deserves more. Isn't fanfiction all about elaborating characters that aren't properly developed in canon?  
> Where is all the Panther fanfiction?!  
> I was afraid to write him in my last story (the Dealer's Hand) because I was afraid of making him a caricature -- but I tried anyway because I knew at the very least, I couldn't do worse than the series!!! From the very beginning, The Missing Plane was all about bringing Panther back, under extenuating circumstances...  
> With Panther falling in love in Japan, I could explore one of my favourite themes: the meaning of place and home. So Panther couldn't stay and live happily ever after, for the reasons he tells us about in the ending... But really? He's just realizing this stuff now? If he was a teenager, okay, maybe, but he is thirty something. It seems like too much to ask for you to believe that Patrick Spencer's grandmother named him after the Black Power movement but he somehow didn't get 'woke' until some half-white woman in Japan asked him to think about it. I'm sorry if this surpassed your suspension of disbelief.  
> (Maybe I should have let him play house with HiroMamo afterall. More fun and maybe more believable, too!)
> 
> Otherwise.... I am honestly curious what you thought of this story. Was it a mistake? Was rehabilitating Agon a fool's errand? Would Suzuna really have said yes? Was Sena just too hopeless and unredeemed? Was there just simply not enough Hiruma (is there ever enough Hiruma?)? 
> 
> It is still incredible to me that you read to the end. I hope you were able to enjoy despite all its shortcomings. ♥️ A million thanks.


End file.
